Materials

Lanxess (Leverkusen, Germany) has opened an Asia-Pacific Application Development Center for its high-tech plastics in the Hong Kong Science & Technology Park. Run by the High Performance Materials (HPM) business unit, it will provide comprehensive and high-value services ranging from concept development support, computer-aided design, computer-aided engineering and mold-design assistance to part test applications for the automotive industry and other segments.

An insert molding process employing a co-polyamide adhesion promoter to bond aluminum tubing with fiberglass-reinforced polyamide 6 is being used by Mercedes Benz in several of its vehicles to derive weight savings.

The aluminum tubing employed in the vehicles connects both A-pillars together and supports the entire dashboard—from the steering wheel to the glove compartment. These elements used to be welded or screwed together with metal connecting plates, a stable solution, but one that involves more weight.

In response to a recent blog post on ANTEC, veteran medical device design engineer Len Czuba sent the following email to PlasticsToday, which is published here with his permission. He is the president of his own product development firm, Czuba Enterprises, which is located in the greater Chicago area, and holds 15 U.S. patents for his work. Czuba has served twice as the chairman of the Medical Plastics Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers.

Bumpers for trucks and heavy goods vehicles are being increasingly manufactured from thermoplastics. Unlike previous models, these bumpers are no longer produced as a single piece from sheet molding compounds (SMC). Instead, they are manufactured on a modular basis from several components, consisting of, for example, polyamide and polyester compounds from Lanxess (Leverkusen, Germany). This reportedly enables easier repair.

The biggest and splashiest exhibit at BIOMEDevice in Boston this week was staged by a company that didn't even exist a year ago.

Rethink Robotics attracted crowds anxious to see activities of the new humanoid robot Baxter, which has been a big hit in the plastics processing industry since its launch late last year.

Passenger car front end carriers can now be designed exclusively of plastic, as illustrated by the new Skoda Octavia. The vehicle's front end carrier is made of Durethan DP BKV 60 H2.0 EF, a highly reinforced polyamide (PA) 6 from Lanxess (Leverkusen, Germany) with 60% glass-fiber filling.

Sabic Innovative Plastics has unveiled two new grades of Lexan CFR polycarbonate (PC) copolymers that will help aircraft OEMs, designers, and manufacturers realize new weight-out strategies while meeting the industry's strict regulatory demands at the Aircraft Interiors Expo running April 9-11 in Hamburg, Germany. These compliant materials reportedly enable processors to produce parts with thinner walls, which help reduce interior weight of an aircraft. 

A new optical pellet screening system employs a combination of LED illumination, cameras, and air blowers to detect and remove pellets with black spots from a stream of resin pellets with a resolution (spot size) of 0.03 mm. The Super Platon KP-10000T from Kubota (Tokyo) was recently installed at an Asian elastomer compounder.

Worried that that land use for bioplastics feedstocks competes directly with feed and food crops? No need, says European Bioplastics in its recently published booklet “Bioplastics: facts and figures”. Out of a total global agricultural area of 5 billion hectares, around 300,000 hectares are used to grow feedstocks for bioplastics: in other words, 0.006%. Metaphorically speaking, this ratio correlates to the size of an average cherry tomato placed next to the Eiffel Tower.

Liquid metal injection molding is a potentially disruptive technology for the production of precise, small parts for medical devices. Series production costs are much lower than machining, an advantage that grows as volumes rise. Considerable strength derives from the material's amorphous atomic structure.