Material guide
ABS, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene
ABS, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, is the tough plastic with an even, matte surface that takes color and machining well. Easy to thermoform and mill, a common choice for covers, housings and visible parts that have to take a knock.
What it is
ABS, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, is a tough, impact resistant styrene plastic with an even surface that is easy to finish. It combines good impact resistance with dimensional stability and lets itself be thermoformed, milled and bonded, which makes it a standard choice for covers, housings and prototypes. The surface takes color and print well and gives a clean, matte look. The material sits at the affordable end of the aesthetic plastics and is a good choice when you want an impact resistant visible part without paying up for polycarbonate.
Properties
Good impact resistance, takes knocks without cracking
Even, matte surface that takes color, print and finishing well
Dimensionally stable and holds its measurements in machining
Easy to thermoform, mill and bond
Good value compared with polycarbonate and acrylic
Common applications
ABS sits in covers, housings, panels, fronts and interior parts where you need an impact resistant surface that looks good. It is common in prototypes and short runs because it is easy to form and machine, and in machine cladding and equipment cases where a matte, paintable surface is an advantage. When a designer wants something tougher and cheaper than acrylic for a visible part, ABS is often where they land.
Limitations
ABS is not transparent and not a high temperature material, so for optical parts you pick acrylic or polycarbonate, and for hot environments an engineering plastic. It is sensitive to UV and weather over time unless it is stabilized, so for outdoor use in the sun you want a UV stabilized version or a different plastic. Chemical resistance is moderate, especially against solvents, so PP or PVC suits a chemical environment better.
To be concrete about the heat: our ABS grades handle 75 °C in continuous use and 100 °C for short periods, and downward they go to -20 °C. If the part is going to sit near a heat source, that is where ABS runs out.
Grades and variants
ABS comes in a few versions, and it is also one of the plastics we can run in custom production.
Base grades
- ABS, the standard grade. Impact resistant with a matte surface, for covers, housings and visible parts.
- ABS/PMMA, a combination that puts the harder, glossier surface of acrylic on top of the impact resistance of ABS.
- ASA, a more weather resistant relative of ABS for outdoor use.
Custom production
For custom production (your own color, your own blend or version) we can run ABS and ABS/PMMA. ASA can be custom produced, but it needs a minimum volume of 2 to 3 tons and is considerably more expensive than ABS, so it is rarely the right choice unless the volume is there. Get in touch and we will work out what is possible for your run.
Machining
ABS is easy to work with. It can be milled, turned, drilled and sanded with ordinary tools, and the surface takes both lacquer and adhesive without any pretreatment. Thermoforming works well, which is a large part of why the material is so common in covers and housings. Sharp tools and a moderate feed give the cleanest surface.
Formats we can supply
ABS is available as sheets and round rods. You can see formats and dimensions in the range. Want a piece cut to size? Enter the measurements in VisualCutter and you see the price straight away. For your own versions there is custom production as described above.