Engel UK’s Composites Conference charts road to automotive lightweighting

Engel UK has welcomed over 200 delegates to conferences at its facilities in Warwick.

Two one-day conferences on high volume composite parts for automotive applications were jointly hosted by Engel UK and Jaguar Land Rover, featuring speakers from automotive manufacturers such as JLR and Nissan. Visitors also heard from material suppliers including DuPont and Lanxess and companies involved in the production of automotive components such as CCP Gransden and Formaplex. They were joined by presenters from Warwick Manufacturing Group, and trade association Composites UK.

Opening the event, Graeme Herlihy, Managing Director of Engel UK said: “This is a big opportunity for the injection moulding industry”

Robert Crow, Materials Innovation Manager at Jaguar Land Rover explained that polymer substrates account for 20 per cent of a vehicles mass and is the second largest element in the vehicle. This therefore offers great potential for light weighting of components. He emphasised that every gram counts in the challenge to make vehicles lighter and reduce Carbon Dioxide emissions. He added that knowledge will be key and education about the possibilities will be essential for future designers.

Crow was followed by Mark Ellis from Nissan Technical Centre Europe, who agreed with JLR that it is essential to get the weight out of vehicles. He indicated that the right combination of design, materials and manufacturing process will be needed to achieve the light weight challenge for the automotive industry mass market. Ellis also emphasised the global pressure to reduce fuel consumption and Carbon Dioxide emissions. He explained that currently manufacturers receive penalty fines for vehicles sold with Carbon Dioxide emissions above targets. Of interest to the recycling sector of the plastics industry will be his view that increasing the use of lightweight materials shifts the environmental burden from the use phase of a vehicle to the end-of-life phase. Therefore, methods to recover, separate and recycle multi material components will need to be developed. Currently, EU legislation sets a target of 95 per cent recoverability and 85 per cent recyclability for vehicles. Ellis believes recyclability will be the key to any success for multi material construction of automotives.

A big future for composites was predicted by Peter Egger from Engel’s Centre for Lightweight Composite Technologies. He explained how Engel’s belief in the imminent typical use of composites in manufacturing processes has lead them to develop machines with features suited to volume production of lightweight composite parts. Guests at the event could view one example of these, an Engel-130 Vertical Insert machine, in a live demonstration during lunch. This large-scale machine has been designed with lightweight automobile components in mind. It achieves particularly precise results, especially in fibre composite applications and processes with high cavity pressure. Delegates were impressed by its compact footprint and its excellent energy efficiency.

Warwick University’s Automotive Composite Research Centre outlined the research they are engaged in concerning process development. Delegates provided many questions for their speaker, Rachel Weare, about WMG’s results using an Engel v-Duo 1700 tonne (vertical) injection moulding machine.

Craig Norrey from DuPont gave an informative overview of thermoplastic composites and illustrated some material characteristics versus metal. His case studies highlighted the key features of PA based composites and processing options.

Lanxess presented an outline of fibre reinforced plastics (FRP) and the processes involved. They showed that a combination of processes strongly increases the lightweight efficiency, increasing stiffness, strength and toughness.

For the parts production sector Formaplex discussed their wide experience of manufacturing of tooling and niche components for their customers using advanced materials. Participants in the event were particularly interested their part in the development of an automotive thermoplastic composite rear bulkhead.

Scott King, Strategic Partnership Manager of Northern Ireland based CCP Gransden spoke with a passion about their “leap” into high volume advanced composite parts manufacturing. He explained how client demand and the identification of new business opportunities have led the company to invest in state of the art composite processing, potentially the highest rate manufacturing cell in the UK.  The audience could identify with many of the points he made through their own experiences in other moulding sectors.