Autonomous driving and car sharing are becoming more and more important and are transforming the car interior into a living and working space. Plastics, with their low weight and shape, are the material of choice for making the new ‘living space’ functional. But the collaboration between Covestro, Dr Schneider Unternehmensgruppe and Engel is going one step further.
Dr Schneider
Engel, Covestro and Dr Schneider collaborate on lightweight composite automotive project
By using so-called continuous fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composites, the components can be made not only lighter and slimmer, but also with a high-quality design.
A modular table system, dubbed the ‘lightweight table’, was developed for the ‘autonomotive’ cars of the future by Covestro as manufacturer of the thermoplastic materials; Engel Austria as supplier of machine and process technology; and the Dr Schneider Unternehmensgruppe as a tier one supplier to the automotive industry.
With a length of 41cm and a width of 32cm the table weighs just 690 grams. With its thickness of less than centimetre, the newly developed lightweight table can carry a load of around 50 kilograms. The table is also extremely space-saving, as it can be folded away and stowed between the rear seats.
The Unternehmensgruppe developed a tool with a so-called variothermal temperature control for the production, which ensures that flawless component surfaces are produced. At the same time, the tool was designed in such a way that the material lies evenly against the tool walls during the forming process without wrinkling.
Bernd Trinkwalter, Head of Advanced Development at Dr Schneider, said: "We will not be able to win any future orders with onion-skin construction. The trend towards function integration with fewer and fewer individual parts will continue to grow in the future."