TECHNOLOGY | COMPOSITES


Right: The thixomoulded magnesium alloy core of a polymer-metal hybrid


composite tyre carrier


developed by Leggera Technologies, which won an SPE 2018 Automotive Innovation Award


The capability of combining over-moulding with


the thixomoulding process for injection moulding magnesium alloys was demonstrated in an automotive development from Leggera Technologies that won the US company a Society for Plastics Engineers Automotive Innovation Award in November 2018. The award in the Process, Assembly & Enabling Technologies category was for the Jeep Wrangler’s polymer hybrid composite tyre carrier, developed by Leggera with its partners Fiat Chrysler, TMD Group (acquired by Grammer in 2018) and DuPont. Leggera Chief Operating Officer Boney Mathew


presented the award-winning tyre carrier at AMI’s Performance Polyamides conference in Pittsburgh in November. The previous production part was a die-cast magnesium structure with integral steel reinforcements, which had a risk of galvanic corrosion. This was overcome by the new design having a thixomolded magnesium core that is protected by an over-moulded polyamide 66 skin. The polymer-metal composite structure also has improved impact resistance. Other advantages of replacing cast magnesium with thixomolded magnesium in the tyre carrier were that it increased ductility by 10%, reduced weight, integrated a shroud to protect the rear-view camera, and led to cost savings of nearly $15 per vehicle. Leggera sees good market opportunities for


polymer-magnesium composite automotive parts as the car industry looks for lightweight alternatives to components usually made entirely of metals. At the conference, Mathew showed a slide with potential applications, including a lift gate, skid plate, oil pan and front-end composite beam. Lanxess continues to evolve the plastics-metal hybrid moulding technology developed by Bayer, which in its original form makes use of injection moulded glass fibre reinforced polyamide 6 in combination with steel or aluminium sheet. Around a year ago, Lanxess extended the scope of the tech- nology to makes use of metallic hollow profiles with round or rectangular cross sections. “Compared to sheet metal, hollow


Lanxess manufactured a demonstrator using its hollow profile hybrid technology, which – compared to a corresponding hybrid component manufactured on the basis of sheet metal – exhibits significantly higher dimensional stability as well as increased torsional strength and stiffness


48 INJECTION WORLD | January/February 2019


profiles show significantly higher dimensional stability as well as increased torsional strength and stiffness,” says Lukas Schröer, Project Manager for lightweight structures in the company’s High Performance Materials (HPM) business unit. “We believe that this new ‘Hollow Profile Hybrid Technology’ enables the manufacturing of components such as cross car beams, which up until now were not resilient enough using classic plastic-metal hybrid technology.” Once again, cost-efficient processing is a key


priority. “It needs to be possible to smoothly and fully automatically place the metal inserts into the injection moulding tool,” says hybrid technology specialist Boris Koch. “The result of our development work is a process that is suitable for large scale production, only requires an investment in standard injection moulds and machines, makes short cycle times just like standard injection moulding possible, and is just as simple as the classic hybrid technology using metal sheets.” Lanxess hopes the new hybrid technology will be used for such parts as seat structures, front ends, tail gates, and mirror brackets in trucks. It also sees potential in furniture, ladders, and baby strollers. Lanxess is currently working on expanding hybrid technology to simple die-cast or extrusion moulding inserts. “Even hollow profile inserts made of fibre-reinforced composite can be used in the new hybrid technology,” says Koch.


CLICK ON THE LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION: � www.polyplastics-global.com � www.ict.fraunhofer.de � www.akro-plastic.com � www.plasmatreat.de � www.evonik.com � www.dieffenbacher.de � www.arburg.com � www.engelglobal.com � www.nccuk.com � www.leggeratech.com � www.lanxess.com


www.injectionworld.com


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