Exotic resin replaces metal in gear shift lever

A leading automotive OEM in Europe is now using a polyphthalamide (PPA) compound from Evonik Industries (Darmstadt, Germany) in the serial production of a gearshift lever part, thereby enabling metal replacement and lightweighting. Turkish company Eurotec Engineering Plastics AS (Corlu) compounded Vestamid HTplus specifically for this purpose.

Gear lever's exposure to clutch oil calls for high chemical resistance.

"Our decision in favor of Vestamid HTplus M1000 was based on its good processing characteristics and the outstanding mechanical properties of the material," says Reha Gür, commercial director at Eurotec. "This allowed us to offer the OEM a customized product based on their future expectations that not only weighs less, but is also more economical than the previous solution."

The original gearshift lever component was made of metal. Because of the special property profile of PPA, Eurotec was able to switch its production to the high-performance polymer. Other arguments in favor of using PPA included high resistance to lubricants and oils that are typically present in clutch systems.

In addition to high chemical resistance, molded parts made from Vestamid HTplus offer high dimensional stability and excellent mechanical properties such as rigidity and tensile strength. Vestamid HTplus is reportedly therefore ideally suited for use in conventional metal applications.-[email protected]