automotive | Update in brief
❙ German automotive lighting group Hella is setting up a new Chinese joint venture company with local automo- tive manufacturer BAIC. Hella says Beijing Hella BHAP Automotive Lighting will enable the company to expand its Chinese capacity and offer local manufactur- ers a more extensive service. Work on the facility will commence after official approval of the venture later this year by the Chinese authorities.
www.hella.com
❙ SGL Group and BMW have announced a tripling of production capacity at their joint venture SGL Automotive Carbon Fibers production facility at Moses Lake in Washington State in the US. The $200m investment will make it the world’s largest carbon fibre plant, the partners say. The site currently has two lines with an annual production capacity of 2,700 tonnes of carbon fibre, which is used exclusively for BMW’s car production.
www.sglgroup.com
❙ Spain’s Grupo Antolin has announced a 6.8% increase in Q1 sales to €556.4m. The company said invoiced business was ahead by 14% in Europe and 26% in Asia-Pacific. However, North America was down by 2% and Brazil by 18%. The best performances were achieved in its automotive seating and lighting divisions, which posted 33% and 27% gains.
www.grupoantolin.com
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Composite mount cuts weight by half for Audi
A consortium of plastics processing specialists working with car maker Audi and materials company Lanxess has developed a continuous fibre reinforced thermoplastic composite infotainment mount that provides a 50% weight saving over steel. The prototype part, which is designed to hold an amplifier and TV tuner, is produced in one-shot in a single mould using two inserts made of Tepex Dynalite 102- RG600(2)/47%, a PA6 compos- ite produced by Lanxess subsidiary Bond-Laminates. These inserts are heated, inserted in the mould and formed, and then directly over- moulded with Durethan BKV 30 EF H2.0 PA6 to create the part. The process was developed
by several partners within the SpriForm project funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Partners included machinery maker KraussMaffei and mouldmaker Christian Karl Siebenwurst, as well as Audi’s Control Device Package Development and Fibre Reinforced Plastics Technology Development departments. “The prototype weighs about half as much as a comparable component in
steel, and can be installed more easily and produced in a large-scale manufacturing process,” says Lanxess engineering expert Ulrich Dajek.
The weight of the infotain-
ment components places considerable stresses on the mount during operation and this was simulated during the development using Lanxess’s structural analysis tools. The part is produced in an
automated process on a cycle time of less than 60s. A linear robot is used to load the pre-heated composite inserts and to remove the finished parts. Fixing holes are produced in the mould, with Siebenwurst incorporating
special pins that pierce rather than punch the fabric to preserve fibre continuity. ❙
www.lanxess.com
Granta launches data consortium
Materials information group Granta Design has launched the Automotive Material Intelligence Consortium – AutoMatIC – to help OEMs and suppliers work together to develop best practice solutions for design and simulation of lightweight components. AutoMatIC is modeled on
two previous projects that the company has conceived to help in the industrial application of materials information technology: Material Data
INJECTION WORLD | June 2014
Management Consortium (MDMC) and the Environmen- tal Materials Information Technology (EMIT) Consortium. The project is intended to
enhance existing technology tools for the management of materials information and to help users deploy it in new projects. It is intended to run for an initial period of three years, beginning this month, and is open to any organisation in the automotive sector with an interest in the application of
materials information technology. Granta Design says its role
in the project is to provide members with access to technology, data, and project work including: software to manage corporate materials data; tools to integrate materials data into CAD, PLM, and simulation; and reference data sources on automotive steels, lightweight alloys, polymers, and composites. ❙
www.grantadesign.com
www.injectionworld.com
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