Plastics News Europe - June 2018 - 8

automotive: vDi congress

Plastics continue to
enhance sustainability
The annual PIAE congress featured
lightweight construction, sustainability
and surface technologies. David Vink
reviews exhibits and presentations.

ne day before this year's international VDI plastics in automotive engineering (PIAE) congress kicked off in March, BASF held
its traditional 'Atelier-Treff', during
which the company presented a range
of products and developments of its
own for the automotive industry. An
indication of where the future is headed with regard to haptics was given by
BASF Designfabrik senior industrial design specialist Alex Horisberger. He
showed Plastics News Europe a concept of a decorated film containing
touch sensors that set off a vacuum to
draw the film down into a depression
on e.g. a dashboard, ready to receive a
command and then returned to its
original smooth surface.
The company also highlighted its
involvement in the NEXHOS battery
housing project for "next generation high voltage batteries". While
this looked like a zinc diecasting, it
was in fact made of injection
moulded GF30-PA and PA-based organic sheet parts, which had been
carbon arc zinc sprayed to achieve

Zinc-sprayed polyamide NEXHOS battery housing presented by
HBW Gubesch

electromagnetic compatibility (EMC).
At the VDI congress itself, NEXHOS
project partner, Swiss mouldmaker
Georg Kaufmann showed a black uncoated NEXHOS housing; moulder
HBW Gubesch showed a complete
zinc-sprayed NEXHOS housing. According to HBW Gubesch R&D manager Dr Thomas Müller-Lenhardt, the upper cover plate was moulded in BASF
Ultramid B3GK24, a 10% glass fibre &
20% glass bead reinforced PA6. The
lower cover plate was produced by
"SpriForm" combined injection overmoulding PA6 and thermoforming
BASF B3WG13 WRD1, a continuous
fibre woven fabric PA6-based organic
sheet. SpriForm has also been used
with BASF continuous fibre Ultratape

B3WG12 UD01 tapes in NEXHOS
housing side structures with integrated
aluminium battery cooling tubes.

Renault
Jean-Demis Roulon, polymers process
expert at Renault, described gas and
water fluid assist injection moulded
door frame trials on PMEfluidtec fluid
injection equipment to form an integrated 3.4m long lightweight stiffening channel within the single-part
moulding in an ARRK mould.
The door concept consists of an
outer moulded PP panel, screwed to a
GF-PP reinforcement frame. The 40%
or 60% GF-PP fluid assist inner door
frame is screwed to the GF-PP reinforcement frame and fixed to an inte-

recycled PP meets material specification for new nissan micra
The new Nissan Micra is the first Nissan passenger car to have been built at a Renault
factory, in this case the plant at Flins, on the
same production line as the Renault Clio and
Renault Zoe. The materials purchasing decision for the new Micra was led by the Renault-Nissan
Purchasing
Organisation
(RNPO), which was formed in 2016 as a joint
activity between Renault and Nissan. The
RNPO established an agreed Alliance Standard for all similar vehicles across the brands.
This collaboration was responsible for setting
the polypropylene (PP) material specification
required for the vehicle's interior parts.
Mark Ellis, Materials Technical Specialist
at Nissan Technical Centre Europe explained:
"When it came to the Micra's visual interior
components, the materials team needed a
cost competitive, yet sustainable materials
option able to offer excellent light-weighting to help reduce CO2 emissions. As well as

these requirements, we also wanted high
impact performance, rigidity and excellent
scratch resistance for a high quality finish."
The right material was ultimately sourced
from UK-based technical compounder and
Tier 1 materials supply partner, Luxus. The
partnership between Luxus and Nissan had
developed over more than 22 years: materials supplied by Luxus first featured on the
wheel arch liner for the Sunderland-built Micra in 1992. Development of the Alliance
Standard material specification began in
2014, at the same time as the initial concept
designs were being created. The material
was engineered in parallel to the Micra's design and development to satisfy both the vehicle and its constituent parts in early 2016.
Following extensive pre-production testing and moulding trials at the Flins factory,
the mould tools were made and the Luxus
PP grade was designed and colour matched

The all new Nissan Micra

to meet the specification agreed for the Micra's back door inner moulding part and
other components.
Luxus PP materials were also featured on
a number of standard clips and harness protectors that were produced by UK based Tier
1/2 suppliers and installed into the vehicle
during its assembly.

june 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Plastics News Europe - June 2018