Good Morning Folks!
Its great to be part of a very active stock and message board for a change. I am new to pennies and I'm finding it to be very exciting. Here's my two cents:
I'm a mechanical design engineer and work for a fortune 100 defense contractor. While my forte is not in FEA (Finite Element Analysis). I contracted and consulted for 42 different high tech manufacturers over the last 27 yrs. I have been exposed to many steel and plastic structures though not in the civil engineering sector i.e. bridges. Fifteen years ago I designed a biomedical plastic connector made of a polycarbonate plastic i.e. one of the strongest plastics out there. It was to be inserted permanently into the human body. These parts needed to withstand certain biomed acids, fluids, needed lots of life cycle testing, etc so the material did not break up within the body. The connector was a success.
While this example proves nothing about plastic holding up bridges, it does show what certain plastics can do.
Certain plastics that are glass filled reinforced or fiber reinforced, etc can achieve the strength of steel today with much higher anti-corrosive properties than steel.
Recycled plastics that are cleaned, filtered, reprocessed, etc and combined with other materials can withstand huge loads. GE, among other manufacturers have volumes on plastics and they go out of revision yearly if not monthly due to R&D in the plastics industry. A part by itself under a load vs an assembly of parts under the same load will create much different and stronger structural characteristics. Anti-corrosiveness seems to be a big part of plasticons equation which makes plenty of sense over steel whether chromated or not. Cost of steel vs plastic also seems to be a factor. Steel is much more expensive to extrude or forge vs injected or extruded plastics technology.
I do not doubt Plasticon's ability to create a structural plastic part that directly applies to a subsequent process or structural assembly that can hold up a bridge i.e. rebar rod stock! The technology is out there! I am a shareholder.
