Resin and Glass Fiber Cube

Our one hundred and sixty-something cubes have all been specially made to have the same form and dimensions (40mm2). These four centimetre cubes, made in a multitude of different materials, are one of the stalwarts of the Materials Library, with a long and rich history. The cubes started their life back in the mid-2000s as one of the first sets of specially made objects for our Director Zoe’s PhD, which she used to explore people’s experiences of the density of materials as varied as tungsten, jelly and balsa wood. These cubes are used to encourage our members to think critically about how the materials they choose for their work might impact on people’s sensory and aesthetic experiences of everyday objects.

This particular cube looks a bit like it has been filled with chicken feathers, but is in fact made from a composite of resin and glass fibres. It is likely to be a polyester resin, since this is traditionally used in the creation of fibreglass (also known as glass-reinforced polyester or GRP). The term polyester resin refers to not just one material but a broad array of thermoset polymers that all have a similar chemical backbone but different properties and processing routes depending on the different acids, monomers, glycols and filler materials used to make them. PET (polyethylene terephthalate), the semi-transparent material of milk bottles, is just one example of a polyester resin.

Polyester resins have been around in one form or another since the 1840s, but on their own they tend to be quite brittle, with poor tensile strength. These polymers grew in importance during World War Two when they were used in combination with glass, cellulosic and other fibres as constituents of lightweight, shaped composite structures. Glass fibre reinforced polyester (GRP) was developed specifically for the production of ‘radomes’, curved weatherproof enclosures on WW2 aircraft that needed to protect radar equipment whilst also being transparent to radio waves. It soon became apparent that this strong, lightweight, translucent, inert, heat resistant and easily shaped material had many possible uses, and it soon found its way into other aircraft components, the bodywork of buses and the hulls of boats, as well as pipes and roof panels.