AUTOMOTIVE
GOING WITH THE GRAIN
Greg Blackman speaks to Marco Reichle, at Reichle Technologiezentrum, on laser texturing injection moulds for vehicle makers – now a huge part of the firm’s business
W
hile the electrification of vehicles has big business potential for laser suppliers – the laser is a particularly adept tool for making the electrical
contacts in batteries – other areas of car manufacturing are turning to laser technology just as readily for benefits in terms of quality, reproducibility and speed of production. Reichle Technologiezentrum, based near
Stuttgart, Germany, has built a large part of its business on laser texturing injection moulds for making car components such as dashboards, headlamp bezels, door trim, engine covers and many other moulded parts. According to Marco Reichle, the firm laser grains more than 3,000 injection tools a year, 85 per cent of which are for the automotive sector. ‘Tat’s a huge amount,’ he said. ‘Our competitors believe that laser graining is a small niche, but for us it’s not a niche … this is the biggest part of our business.’ Te company started laser texturing in 2012
and it’s now the largest service supplier for laser texturing in Europe. It also operates in Asia through its Chinese partner. It currently has 26 GF Machining Solutions laser graining systems spread across its sites. Laser graining or texturing is a technique for
patterning injection moulds to give decorative surface finish to the plastic parts produced by the moulds. Textures can be designed to mimic the look of leather, wood and geometric patterns. Tese kinds of surface finish have
12 LASER SYSTEMS EUROPE ISSUE 42 • SPRING 2019 Car manufacturers are moving towards 3D surfaces for dashboards or door trims, which only a laser can produce
traditionally been applied to mould tools using chemical etching, but now the laser is starting to take over to imprint the pattern digitally by ablation. Te GF laser texturing machines contain a fibre laser operating at nanosecond pulse durations, which ablates the material. Marco Reichle explained
that applying acid films to a mould to produce a leather grain for a car interior, for example, might need to be masked for 20 or 30 hours. ‘It’s a very complex job doing this 100 per cent by hand,’ he said. Te same job on a laser
grain applied according to the program. ‘Tere are a lot of standard automotive
2012 and we’ve doubled our laser graining department every year
We started in
machine is fully digital. Te first step is to map the pattern as a greyscale bitmap, with the darker sections representing deeper ablation. Te greyscale bitmap is then layered on top of 3D data of the mould. Te injection tool is positioned inside the laser machine and the
grains,’ Reichle commented. One automotive OEM, for example, uses a fine grain of 27µm depth, and the laser machine is able to apply the approved grain in one or 10 tools with the same quality. Production time depends on the
shape of the tool. A small tool, like that to produce a headlamp bezel or a part for the interior, would have a curing time using traditional chemical etching of around 2.5 to 3.5 weeks, according to Reichle. ‘When you do it by laser, you can
do the same job in a few days,’ he said. An engine cover would have a lead time of three to four weeks using acid graining; with a laser grain, it’s one week. However, the larger the grain surface is, the smaller the difference in the lead time between
@lasersystemsmag |
www.lasersystemseurope.com
Reichle Technologiezentrum
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