What substances are covered with protective gloves?

In addition to the appropriate insert, almost every knitted glove is coated with a layer of substance that gives it protective properties. With what and how can you cover the gloves? What are the advantages of these materials? How to choose a coating? You will learn this from the film.

The most popular substances used to cover the gloves are:

Polyurethane is quite a cheap material and it is possible to coat the glove with its thin layer. This guarantees precision of grip. Water and grease degrade the surface of polyurethane gloves so they are only suitable for work in dry environments, e.g. on assembly lines, for precision works.

Latex is flexible and waterproof, but it has no oil-resistant properties, so it is not suitable for greasy environments, where degraded by grease and oils it quickly breaks. It is also very allergenic, which is why nitrile has become its substitute.

Nitrile is non-allergenic and additionally oil-resistant, and in high concentration it can also be acid-resistant. It is flexible like latex. Foamed nitrile is a coating that revolutionized the market of assembly gloves – it is modern and functional. In many places, it has completely supplanted other products (e.g. leather).

PVC is the material most resistant to abrasion and traditionally used in anti-chemical gloves. Heavy PVC gloves were characterized by a lack of precision of operation, but modern technology – foaming PVC, causes that the products have the best grip in the wet environment, in which they even overtook nitrile.  

The important thing is the concentration of the substance in the coating. It often happens that the glove has more fillers than the base substance, which limits its properties. The nitrile concentration can be checked by rubbing the glove with your index finger on your thumb. A high-concentration nitrile makes a characteristic sound – <sound>.

We invite you to watch 2 parts of the film on the manners of coating the gloves.