Controlling of Baby Soothers Thickness with Heat Sensitized Latex

Manufacturer: We are manufacturing baby teats and soothers (pacifiers) with heat sensitized latex compound. We find controlling the product thickness of the soothers to be very difficult. We hope you can give us some practical tips to overcome this problem.

John Woon (Senior Latex Consultant): There are so many factors involved in this dipping process that could lead to inconsistent thickness of your products. Briefly, some of these factors are as follows:

1) Latex pH must  be closely controlled and monitored before and after the addition of the heat sensitizer.
2) Former temperature should be high enough to ensure good pick of latex but must be well controlled so that a latex dwell time of only a few seconds should suffice.
3) Latex temperature should be at around 20°C and must not vary for more than 1°C.
4) Prevulcanised latex offers better control of product thickness compared to post-vulcanisable latex compounds.

If you want I can prepare a detailed report for you.