TECHNOLOGY | COMPOSITES
Right: In a shear test to assess the strength of a bond between a plasma-treat- ed metal and an Akro-Plastic polyamide, the metal broke before the bond
In automating the process, Plasmatreat says it focused on designing a system which is compact and easy to integrate into a continuous production line. It says its PT1200 plasma cell can be adapted to suit any conventional injection moulding machine. The cell contains the generator, robot, control technology, PCU plasma control unit and plasma jets. The coating process is based on the PlasmaPlus
process developed several years ago by Plas- matreat in conjunction with the Fraunhofer IFAM in Bremen. This generates functional coatings with the aid of a precursor added to the plasma. At materials company Evonik, Frank Lorenz, a
Below: The longitudinal control arm made of high-strength steel plate and Evonik’s Vestamid PA12 with 40% long glass fibres substitutes the solid metal part, reducing the weight by about 20%
director in the company’s High Performance Polymers business, highlights Vestamelt Hylink, a polyamide copolymer that can be applied as a thin (10-25 micron) coil coating or a lacquer onto metal sheet to improve adhesion to plastics in plastic/ metal hybrid components. Lorenz says it works with parts over-moulded with polypropylene as well as polyamides. Lorenz says Evonik’s goal was to come up with high-performance manufacturing processes that would reduce the weight of metallic automobile chassis components. One result shown at Fakuma has weight savings of about 20% in two different rear axle control arms, achieved via adhesive bonding with Vestamelt Hylink between the metal and a long-fibre-rein- forced PA. The parts were produced in a process called MultiForm (developed in a German government-sponsored project) that not only over-moulds the thermoplastic but also forms the metal plate. “By combining steel and LFT, it has been possible
to reduce the thickness of the steel plate by more than a millimeter from the original,” says Lorenz. One major barrier to entry into hybrid moulding
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is the high cost of investment in production equip- ment. This issue is being addressed on several fronts. For example, the German government-fund- ed MoPaHyb research project (MoPaHyb is an abbreviation for “modular production plant for highly durable hybrid components”), which has just finished, had the aim of developing a flexible system for production of hybrid parts, reinforced with metal inserts and/or continuous fibre laminates. The system, which has been fully validated, was
based around a 36,000 kN vertical press from Dieffenbacher, which could be easily connected to a specially developed injection unit with integrated Fibre Direct Compounding (FDC) from Arburg – the largest FDC unit Arburg has yet built. The press could also be used for different types of thermoplastic compression moulding. The project was led by Dieffenbacher, and the reference plant was installed at the Fraunhofer ICT. “Our main input was to develop the process
chain,” says Tobias Joppich, deputy head of the institute’s Polymer Engineering department. “Fraun- hofer ICT brought in the production competence for processing hybrid and fibre reinforced materi- als and defined the production modules to bring everything together in one production line.” The main focus of the project was to create plant layout with modular hardware and controls that
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