Effects of former surface treatment on natural rubber latex deposition

The glove formers are tools used to pick up the coagulants and rubber latex, so the vulcanised rubber takes the form of hands upon drying. As the demands of gloves quality is crucial to serve the purpose of gloves as a bidirectional protective barrier; the gloves are required to be both sturdy and strong as to prevent tearing while also being elastic and comfortable to use. This research is a comparison study on the surface treatment of a ceramic glove former and how it affects the contact angle between the former surface and the coagulant, and the latex being deposited on the former. The study also focuses on the mechanical properties of the gloves and defects produced by the formers. Gloves were made using the two types of formers and the gloves were then tested for their masses, thickness distributions, tensile strengths, elongations and defects. It was found that the talc treated formers was able to adhere coagulant better, a lower contact angle of 22.1⁰ as compared to the untreated former which had a contact angle of 27.6⁰. This enabled the talc treated former to produce natural rubber gloves which had higher mass and more evenly distributed.