Styrene.... polystyrene... is it the same?

[Gazzas]

I was cruising about my local hardware megastore and  came across polystyrene welding rods and started seeing potential uses.  Are these the same plastic as our kits, or is the 'poly' the difference?

 

Gaz

[wmoran]

It's probably the same as models, although there might be different formulations of polystyrene.  Plain styrene is most commonly seen as styrofoam.  All 'styrene' models are actually made of polystyrene.

 

Bill

[LSP_Kevin]

Styrene is just the shorthand name for polystyrene, so it's at least the same class of plastics.

 

Kev

[ScottsGT]

Buy some and try it with model glue to see how it works.  

[Chek]

The prefix 'poly' indicates the material is a 'long chain polymer', and is a class of molecule that makes 'plastics' (the noun) able to be formed and moulded to desired shapes or 'plastic' (the adfjective). Polystyrene is a thermoplastic which is rigid when cold, mouldable when heated, then rigid again in its new moulded shape when it cools.

 

The transparencies in model kits are noticeably more brittle than the other parts and are a purer formulation of polystyrene. The rest of the kit parts can have colourants and plasticisers added giving a range of properties from say the hard, brittle, sharply detailed greenish plastic Hasegawa used in their '70s kits to the softer, more flexible and more softly detailed as used currently by Italeri for example.

 

Expanded polystryrene is a foam consisting of about 5% plastic and 95% air generally used in packaging and dry locations for insulation. It's still polystyrene, but the solvents generally used to melt, weld and bond the rigid forms of polystyrene together will instead just dissolve it.