What Is Rubber?

The definition in ASTM D1566 is as follows: Rubber is a material that can quickly and forcefully recover its deformation under large deformation and can be modified.

Modification essentially refers to vulcanization. Raw rubber, that is, rubber that has not been crosslinked, is composed of linear macromolecules or macromolecules with branched chains. As the temperature changes, it has three states, namely glass state, high elastic state and viscous flow state. Unvulcanized rubber becomes hard at low temperature and soft at high temperature. It has no ability to maintain shape and has low mechanical properties. It is basically useless and must be vulcanized before it can be used. That is to say, raw rubber requires a series of processing to make useful rubber products, which gave rise to the rubber processing industry.

The processing of PVC does not require vulcanization.

If you light it with a fire, PVC will turn into liquid, while rubber will only turn into ash. It is easy to distinguish them from this appearance. And rubber is mostly industrial products. Only a few are used in life. For example, tires, hoses, tapes, sealing products, damping products, etc.