Bayer MaterialScience has chosen PLAST 2015 as the platform to showcase its innovative integrated material concept, as well as the tremendous potential in its Makrolon and Bayblend products.
Bayer
The automotive industry puts more demands in terms of quality and surface versatility than virtually any other industry. Customers value the ability to decorate and customise interior components and in order to accommodate this, car manufacturers are developing short production runs with numerous variants on the basis of high-volume base platforms. The focus now is on the efficient and cost-effective production of components for the respective vehicle class.
At PLAST 2015, Bayer MaterialScience is presenting a complete materials concept based on polycarbonate. Geared to future automotive design, it fulfils all specified requirements, including efficient production. To present various design variations to auto makers and direct suppliers, the company has developed a special sample kit.
"Drivers increasingly value customised, personal designs," said Ciro Piermatteo, Automotive Applications Specialist in the Polycarbonates Business Unit at Bayer MaterialScience. This includes pleasant, atmospheric lighting, a seamless design and transparent, coloured and diversely decorated surfaces.
"The trend right now is black and white, high-gloss surfaces even on vehicle interiors, including trucks," he added. New on the scene are translucent plastics that have the look of frosted glass and are suitable above all for ambient lighting.
Innovative mould concept for different surface structures
At PLAST, Bayer MaterialScience is showing the latest developments in the decorative strip concept. The exhibit expresses the tremendous potential harboured by the use of Makrolon and Bayblend products in this application.
The concept components were created in close collaboration with Gerhardi Kunststofftechnik in Lüdenscheid, Germany. The processing specialist developed an innovative mould concept for efficiently producing a diverse range of surfaces and design variations. The comprehensive performance spectrum of modern Bayer polycarbonate materials enables a single mould frame to be used for a wide range of decorating options.
These include matte and high-gloss structures, attractive colour shades with deep lustre, and coated or metallised surfaces. This near-series mould can be used to render the most common surface design techniques and thus produce a wide array of variations without adding processing steps.
Components with high functionality in a single process step
Polycarbonates from Bayer MaterialScience also play a key role in the production of coated components with integrated light guides. Besides Makrolon LED 2245 as the material for the light guide, advanced Bayblend grades are used as the carrier material. The carrier materials are flooded directly in the mould with polyurethane coatings. The company markets coating raw materials from its Desmodur and Desmophen lines for this application. Perfect rendering of the mould surfaces enables structured, pebbled, high-gloss and matte surfaces to be produced simultaneously.
Fabrication using the DirectCoating method co-developed by Bayer is cost-efficient and can be completed in a single step. This method combines injection moulding and reaction injection moulding (RIM).
"With this technology, durable, 3D components with a customised appearance and haptics can be cost-effectively produced in just one manufacturing step," Piermatteo explained.
3D design freedom with polycarbonate films
Polycarbonate films such as Makrofol HF open up further prospects for the visual design of automotive interiors. These scratch-resistant, coated films are durable and thanks to new processing technologies can also be shaped three-dimensionally. The result is components with a customisable appearance.
One interesting variation is surfaces with daytime/night-time designs that are a good fit with the current infotainment trend. The optical display is only visible when switched on thanks to LEDs integrated behind the film. At all other times, the driver sees only an elegant, matte-black surface. The underlying black panel technology was developed a few years ago by Bayer researchers.