EconCore has developed new honeycomb cores for laminated sandwich panels made with SABIC’s NORYL GTX resin, a polyphenylene ether (PPE) blend, and EconCore’s proprietary technology.
EconCore
EconCore and SABIC collaborate on new honeycomb core for EV applications
The new honeycomb core presents higher heat performance, better dimensional stability and lower water absorption compared to honeycomb structures made with traditional thermoplastics.
These properties enable the new core material to be used in demanding applications such as certain automotive, e-mobility and photovoltaic components.
Furthermore, combining this new honeycomb core with thermoplastic composite skins to produce an all-thermoplastic sandwich panel can facilitate recycling.
EconCore COO Tomasz Czarnecki said: “We turned to SABIC for expert assistance in enhancing our honeycomb cores with high-performance thermoplastics to expand our product’s use in a range of applications and overcome the limitations of incumbent materials … We have been very impressed with NORYL GTX resin’s ease of use in conversion and appreciated the fact that it works well in our existing equipment. We believe its well-balanced properties will allow honeycomb cores to be used more widely in transportation, clean energy and e-mobility applications.”
EconCore honeycombs are produced from a single continuous thermoplastic sheet using the company’s patented technology. In this unique process, the material is extruded and in-line formed into the honeycomb structure without the need for secondary operations. Specifically, this involves a sequence of extrusion and thermoforming steps to transform the extruded film into a half-hexagonal web that is directly folded into a thermoplastic honeycomb structure.
The high efficiency of this continuous process minimizes production costs, making the product very competitive economically. Furthermore, the technology allows for integration of the skin lamination step in-line with the honeycomb core production, providing opportunities for effective, continuous manufacturing of value-added laminated sandwich panels.
“Our most recent collaboration with EconCore underscores our strategy of giving customers across different industries access to higher-performance thermoplastic solutions that can address the stringent requirements of their most demanding applications,” said Tjerk Lenstra, senior business manager, NORYL™ Portfolio, SABIC’s Specialties business.
Luc Govaerts, Director, Formulation and Application Development, SABIC’s Specialties Business, added: “Our unique portfolio and deep product and application expertise, combined with EconCore’s proprietary technology, open up new metal-replacement and weight-out opportunities in a wide range of important segments, such as e-mobility and photovoltaics. We look forward to continuing our work with EconCore to create new customer solutions using our specialty materials.”