Why do bread and masterbatches look alike?
In a chemistry book we could find written that “the masterbatch can be defined as a concentrate of coloring pigments and aesthetic and functional additives”. Or we could also read that “it is used in plastic transformation processes to give new characteristics to the original polymer”. Complex explanations for those who do not know about science. But if, instead, we told you that doing a master’s degree is simple… How to take bread out of the oven?!
Anyone will have happened to follow a recipe that involves mixing water and flour. Perhaps, to share a pizza with friends; to celebrate a birthday with a cake; to bake fragrant biscuits. It may seem strange, but explaining what masterbatches are is possible through these images. All these foods, in fact, have one thing in common: the mixing of ingredients of different nature.
The ingredients of a tasty masterbatch
A pigment or additive behaves like flour, no one can eat it as it is! In fact, flour alone is not satisfying, it is dusty, dirty, it cannot be cooked or grilled. It is necessary to mix it with water to give it a solid appearance, to dissolve lumps, in short, to make it edible and allow it to obtain its nourishment functionality. Any bakery is made like this, starting from a dough of different elements.
Masterbatches are characterized by the same principle: water for us corresponds to plastic, everything else (flour, salt, yeast) is equivalent to the mix of coloring pigments and additives that are used to compose our recipe. Different ingredients allow you to bake different breads, but they all take shape from the same process and so we can obtain white bread, focaccia, baguettes, brioche bread, hamburger bread…
Masterbach: An essential element
Clearly, if you plan to make a pizza, but you get a sponge cake your dinner will fall apart. However, this does not mean that it is a problem of baked bread, but that the recipe that was decided to follow was not suitable for the program for the evening. In the same way, each masterbatch is used to achieve a specific goal, so it must be formulated starting from the result one expects: to fill a pizza, you need to have pizza bread, just as to have a technical plastic, you need a technical master. It happens that those who have to carry out a plastic project on the shopping list put the master’s degree in last place, considering it less essential. This is a serious mistake because this concentrate, however small, is fundamental, as it acts as a structure for the processed plastic. In short, it is like carefully choosing the toppings to prepare a sandwich first, but then preferring to buy breadsticks instead of bread.
Just like bread
So the masterbatch is the essential component that allows a plastic project to be structured and stable. If you want to build an arch, but you don’t put the keystone, or you choose an unsuitable block of stone, everything collapses. The master is that supporting element that allows the project to stay together and have unique characteristics. It is like the flour that gives body to bread, the yeast that makes it grow, the salt that gives flavor. You just need to know how to dose the right ingredients well and rely on your trusted baker who always knows how to recommend the best combination for our dinner … Just as a good master’s expert knows how to choose the best color for our plastic!
What are masterbatches, plastics, and other questions
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