JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #142 - September/October 2021 - 36

FEATURE industry
um forming) and tools. These steps were taken
in full accordance with our main customers,
who had a very positive response towards our
growth " .
CSM moving from interiors to
exteriors
Persico has been working hard on developing
Composite Spray Moulding (CSM)
technology (PU spray on honeycomb and
fibres) during the last ten years, mainly
for the production of automotive load
floors and parcel shelves. Up to now, the
company has been well known as a turnkey
supplier of complete production systems
for interior panels (including wet spraying
systems, dry equipment, automation, tools
as well as panel lamination and edge folding
systems).
The quality of the tools ensures long-lasting
and accurate edge cutting throughout the
project.
Persico successfully delivered 72 CSM projects
so far, ranging from just the moulds
to complete production systems (from raw
materials to finished parts, including lamination,
edge folding and inserts if needed).
In all the production systems delivered,
the moulds are a key equipment due to
their high level of surface quality and edge
cutting accuracy. This makes it possible to
mould panels ready for lamination without
any prior deflashing, to have inserts
co-moulded and to apply waterproof
surface films automatically.
Recently, a number of full production
systems for CSM technology (tools, wet
PU spray, dry and sandwich preparation)
were developed and delivered to produce
over 1.5 million cars per year just in North
America. It is remarkable that all were
full production lines entirely supplied by
Persico, which also is the only supplier with
successful experience in turnkey production
systems integrating any of the top wet
machines.
Roof and body panels
" Now we moved to another level as we developed
production lines and tools for exterior
components such as roofs and body panels for
the worldwide leader in roof systems.
Going one step forward in CSM technology,
we moved from classic load floors to exte36
jec
composites magazine / N°
Roof and body panels © courtesy of Persico Group
rior body panels. This ambitious result was
achieved thanks to our experience in vacuum
forming technology: in 2020 we took over the
automotive activities from Kiefel and started
Persico GmbH in Freilassing, Germany.
We also delivered automatic thermoforming
lines to produce the precut aesthetical liners
(Class A surface body panels) to be loaded in
the tools during the PU spray moulding phase.
The final goal is to produce exterior roof and
body panels for a high-volume SUV " , Carlo
Ortenzi says.
A key aspect was the proper thermoforming
of the external skin to be overmoulded
using the Baypreg process and the second
challenging aspect, never achieved in an
automated manner so far, was to be able
to mill the paper honeycomb with highly
demanding shapes before the sandwich
with the glass fibre mats can be piled up.
We asked Mr Ortenzi whether, in his opinion,
it will be possible to use honeycomb
made from materials other than cardboard
in the future. He answered: " For the automatic
handling and milling of honeycomb, we
took advantage of Persico Marine's significant
experience in aramid and aluminium honeycomb
handling and 3D milling, as these
materials have been used for years to build
sandwich structures for racing sailing yachts.
However, for automotive parts, the use of
paper honeycomb is widespread due to its low
cost, good performance and ability to bind well
to the sprayed PU. We ended up with a system
including more than 20 robots, milling cells
and automatic sandwich making machines. "
142 September - October 2021
The process runs as follows:
- expanding the honeycomb paper with a
hot expander machine;
- cutting the paper honeycomb to the
correct size of the part to be produced;
- 3D CNC milling the honeycomb paper
following the CAD data;
- preparing the bottom glass fibre layer
with an adhesive to glue the milled
honeycomb paper part;
- placing the second glass fibre layer over
the honeycomb paper part and connecting
the two glass fibre layers using
a stapler;
- vacuum thermoforming and precutting
the aesthetical liner;
- loading the vacuum-formed liner and
the glass-paper honeycomb sandwich in
the CSM tools and overmoulding with
PU spray.
The outstanding features of this process
are the ability to produce CSM panels with
high thickness and draw variations, the
production of a high-quality aesthetical
surface, the fully-automated control of the
production process and the high production
line efficiency.
Composite hydrogen pressure
vessels produced with the SMART-H2
rotomoulding technology
The interest in the use of hydrogen in the
automotive sector is growing due to the
great commitment to developing solutions
and technologies that facilitate its use, but
also to creating components that simplify
JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #142 - September/October 2021

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