The current trend in the manufacturing industry is the use of lightweight materials. Electronics, household appliances, even aviation or automotive manufacturers are focusing on lightweight materials to produce the final parts. In particular, the plastic is used the most widely and popularly and also is being developed in order to achieve higher quality and lighter.
Recently, Repsol, in collaboration with Grupo Antolin and 3M has developed a polypropylene (PP) grade for lightweight vehicles. It is called “Repsol Isplen® PF179EV”. This new polypropylene compound has been possible due to a close collaboration with Grupo Antolin, the biggest Spanish manufacturer of interior compounds for automobiles, and 3M, alongside Repsol’s compounds manufacturing knowledge and experience in the development of technical materials for automotive applications.
Based on the synergistic combination of traditional fillers and 3MTM Glass Bubbles, it is specially designed to obtain an important weight reduction in final parts while preserving the desired mechanical properties for these materials pieces: flexibility and scratch resistance.
The tailgate interior trim trunk door, manufactured by Grupo Antolin for new models of compact cars, has proved a significant weight reduction can be obtained with this new grade. This new material has enabled a 9.3% weight reduction in the final part, in relation to a standard 16% of talc polypropylene compound (PP 16% Talc Filled). The weight reduction is not the only leaping quality, this grade’s scratch resistance offers a significant improvement over polypropylene grades with Talc Fillers (PP-Talc), and with colour and brightness (ΔL) deviation values below 1.0 for a different surface finishes.
With demand growing for light materials in today automobile manufacturing industry, this new grade is one of the best suited when it does not only offer an adequate solution to the growing demand for vehicle weight reduction but also excellent surface finish and improved mechanical properties.
The development trend is now clearly in favor of lightweight products, so we will witness many other materials that are developed to achieve better weight. Therefore, the manufacturers always have to capture trends as well as the development of the materials market, so that they can improve the technology appropriately, and then create a competitive advantage for their enterprises.
(According to plasticsengineering.org)