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Material Spotlight: NYLOIL® for Wet Environments

Taylor Stinson

Bushings, bearings, wear strips for industrial conveyor belts: these are a few examples of the parts we’ve made using NYLOIL®. 

So what makes this cast nylon so impressive? And how can this material help make your parts strong, durable, and self-lubricating?

Cast Nylon: A Substitute with Strength

Cast nylon is a thermoplastic resin with the right properties and price point to serve as an excellent substitute for rubber, stainless steel, and other metals and alloys.

Lightweight and easy to machine, cast nylon offers incredible resistance to wear, impact, friction, and corrosion. The low-stress material withstands harsh environments with greater stability and higher strength than extruded nylon.

You’ll find cast nylon components used throughout industries, including:

  • Marine

  • Food processing

  • Bottling and canning

  • Wastewater treatment

  • Automotive

  • Construction

  • Agriculture

  • Mining

  • Oil and gas

  • Textiles

Cast Nylon 6: Pourable Possibilities

At Accurate CNC Services, we primarily utilize NYLOIL, a grade-6 cast nylon material. This nylon casting grade can be poured into an open mold to create a range of shapes, from standard rods and sheets to intricate near-net shapes. 

NYLOIL: Our Preferred Self-Lubricating Plastic

North America’s first self-lubricating plastic, NYLOIL imbues cast nylon 6 with an oil-filled lubricant to create a high-crystalline polymer that enhances the material’s wear and reduces friction. Weighing one-seventh the weight of steel, NYLOIL is easily machined, minimally absorbent, and chemical-resistant. NYLOIL FG is the FDA-approved, food-grade version of the self-lubricating polymer. 

Other self-lubricating cast nylon 6 materials include NYLOIL MDX (which contains strengthening MoS2) as well as NYCAST® RX, GX, BX, and SLX. Nylatron® is another self-lubricating plastic brand. 

4 Features of Self-lubricating Plastics

To be considered self-lubricating, a plastic must meet four specific criteria:

  1. The lubrication is integral to the material, not an external additive. NYLOIL is internally homogeneously lubricated, providing consistent lubrication throughout a system’s life cycle—no external lubrication is needed. 

  2. The lubrication does not break down or lose effectiveness with increased use. The lubricant in NYLOIL does not dry up, spin out, or drain out of the material and acts as a natural protective barrier in marine, wet, and moist environments.

  3. The lubrication evenly spreads across the mating surface. NYLOIL provides lubrication as microscopic amounts of the material transfer to the mating surface. The resulting film delivers a 25% lower friction coefficient than other nylons.

  4. The cost of the self-lubricating plastic does not increase as system components are added. Because the lubricant disperses evenly across all mating surfaces, NYLOIL parts are priced according to their own size, not the surfaces they will lubricate.

Machining NYLOIL 

NYLOIL is considered very easy to machine, but it does need to be treated with care. When working with NYLOIL, we begin with excess material and proceed slowly with machining. 

We approach NYLOIL turning just as we’d turn a free-cutting material. Milling and sawing are similarly straightforward, though there are a few special considerations. Drilling NYLOIL can be challenging due to space constraints and the material’s poor heat conduction, but it is feasible with proper tooling and procedures. With sharp tools that have never machined metal, successful tapping and threading are possible. 

We anneal all cast nylon grades after machining to reduce material stress. Some parts even require intermediate annealing to maintain dimensional stability—another benefit of this polymer. NYLOIL’s oil content allows it to stabilize at a low 2.5% moisture content, enabling these parts to hold critical tolerances as small as +/- 0.0001” both in and out of water.

Get NYLOIL Parts from Accurate CNC Services

Accurate CNC Services can machine numerous parts from NYLOIL, including:

  • Bearings

  • Bushings

  • Gears

  • Seals

  • Sprockets

  • Start wheels

  • Thrust washers

  • Valve seats

  • Wear pads

If you need these or other parts made from self-lubricating, cast nylon 6 polymer, we’re here to deliver high quality and excellent service.

Request a quote!