Glance around your home and you'll find polymer in places you'd never think to look for it. The non-stick coating on the frypan. The reusable water bottle. The rain jacket. The lining of the dishwasher, the casing of a laptop, the lenses of reading glasses, the carpet underfoot.
Polymer means “of many parts,” from the long chains of repeating molecules that give the material its strength and flexibility. Natural polymers have been around since the first cell divided: cellulose, silk, wool, and DNA. The synthetic version has been around since the mid-1800s, when an Englishman named Alexander Parkes noticed an unusual residue left behind by evaporating photographic solvent and patented a way to waterproof fabric with it. By the 1900s, polymer was in everything from telephones to parachutes to the windscreens of fighter aircraft.
Today, engineered polymers are quietly replacing metal in applications that would once have been unthinkable. Air intake manifolds. Ballistic plates worn by armed forces. Stabilisation bolts holding the walls of working mineshafts. Cabin interior panels and structural components on commercial aircraft. Heat shielding on spacecraft, protecting hulls from atomic oxygen and ultraviolet radiation during re-entry.
So why is “plastic” still a dirty word in the trade?
The plastic supermarket bag and the Boeing 787 fuselage panel are both polymer. But only one is made from engineered-grade polymer. It's the version of the material that gets specified into applications where failure isn't an option.
Three things separate engineered-grade polymer from the cheap stuff.
1. The first is the resin itself. Commodity plastic is made from generic polypropylene or polyethylene pellets, often blended with regrind from previously moulded material to bring the unit cost down. The trouble with regrind is that it loses strength every time it's heated and reformed. Engineered-grade polymer starts with virgin pellets only, frequently nylon, frequently reinforced with virgin fibreglass, and selected for impact strength, dimensional stability, and resistance to creep under load.
2. The second is what’s added. UV stabilisers are compounded into the material, not sprayed on as a coating that wears off later. Self-lubricating additives are dosed in for moving parts that have to operate, latch, or pivot tens of thousands of times without service.
3. The third is the moulding. Engineered-grade polymer is designed for high-tonnage compression moulds, enabling exacting tolerance control, consistency, and outstanding structural integrity.
Get those three things right and you have a material that competes with metal on strength, with rubber on flexibility, and outperforms both on weather resistance and weight.
D&D Technologies has been engineering polymer to that standard since 1989. The result is EverStrong™, D&D's engineered-grade polymer. A fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composite, it’s in the same family of materials as the aircraft cabin panels, lightweight armour, and high-stress automotive components mentioned above.
EverStrong™ is the material behind D&D's flagship polymer hardware: MagnaLatch®, LokkLatch®, TruClose®, and KwikFit®. UV-stabilised against the highest UV indices on the planet. Self-lubricating, so it doesn't seize. Built around 316 marine-grade stainless steel components where the load and corrosion case demands it. Weather tested for tens of thousands of cycles.
The reason D&D award-winning hardware doesn't rust, sag, or bind is because it’s EverStrong™.
