the top 5 popular insulation and lining used on cooler bags
As we talked previously, cooler bags are normally made with 3 layers materials, outer shell fabric, middle insulation and inner lining. We have introduced the popular shell fabrics and accessories earlier, let’s learn about the top 5 popular insulation and lining materials today.
1.Insulation materials.
There are 3 common insulation materials used in cooler bag industry, Expanded Polyethylene foam, sponge and polyester wadding. Among them, EPE foam is the most used one.
There are different thickness of EPE foam, like 1mm, 2mm, 3mm, 5mm, 8mm, 10mm, 15mm, 20mm and etc. For standard cooler bags, we normally use 2mm, 3mm or 5mm thickness, if you want to keep the things warm/cool for a longer time, we can use a thicker one, like 8mm or 10mm. For some delivery bags, we even use 20 - 25mm thickness.
There are also different colors, like white, black, red and other colors. But most of the time we use white color.
Sponge and polyester wadding are used much less than EPE foam. There are also different thickness and colors for sponge.
For polyester wadding, it only has white color. To tell from the thickness, there are normally 40gsm, 60gsm, 100gsm, 200gsm and etc.
2.Lining
- Aluminum foil. It’s a very environmental material, which is insulating, heat retaining, moisture-proof, waterproof, non-toxic and odorless, it’s also very easy to clean. So it’s widely used in cooler bag industry.
It has different thickness, different colors and different surface textures.
To tell from the thickness, there are 0.12mm, 0.15mm, 0.2mm and etc, 0.15mm thickness is the most used. As per colors, there are mainly silver and gold colors, but gold color is seldom used. There are multiple surface textures to choose from, like square, diamond, rhombus, snowflake, pin wale and some other textures. If you want to customize your own texture, it’s okay too. The square and diamond texture are used a lot. Please see the following images for reference of the different textures.
The aluminum foil lining can be either stitched to the cooler bags directly with inside piping or welded as a liner first and then stitch to cooler bags to make it leak-proof.
- EPE foam laminated with aluminum foil.
The EPE foam and aluminum foil can be stitched to the cooler bags as 2 separate layers, and it’s also okay to laminated them together as one layer first and then stitch it to cooler bags. In this way, due to the aluminum foil is tightly stick to the EPE foam, it makes the inside bag very tidy. The disadvantage is that it can not be welded, so the insulated cooler bag is not leak-proof.
- PEVA lining
It has the same advantages as the aluminum foil lining, such as environmental, insulating, heat retaining, moisture-proof, waterproof, non-toxic, odorless, easy to clean, what’s more it’s very soft and has a slight elasticity. It’s very popular in cooler bag industry too.
The most common thickness is 0.12mm, 0.15mm and 0.18mm, we normally use 0.15mm PEVA for cooler bag lining.
There are multiple colors too, such as white, gray, black, transparent and other colors. Gray and white color are the most used.