Automotive infotainment mount weighs nearly 50% less than steel counterpart

• Hybrid technology with fiber-reinforced polyamide composites
• Forming and overmolding in a single mould
• Fully automated production, component requires no reworking

Hybrid technology based on continuous fiber-reinforced polyamide composites can significantly reduce weight in automotive design, as demonstrated by an infotainment mount developed for production vehicles by AUDI AG, Lanxess, KraussMaffei Technologies GmbH and Christian Karl Siebenwurst GmbH & Co. KG. The prototype weighs about half as much as a comparable component in steel, and can be installed more easily and produced in a large-scale manufacturing process.

The component is produced in a one-shot process in a single mould. It involves the use of two inserts made of Tepex dynalite 102-RG600(2)/47%, a polyamide 6 composite from Lanxess subsidiary Bond-Laminates. They are heated, formed in the injection mould and then directly overmoulded with the easy-flow polyamide 6 Durethan BKV 30 EF H2.0 from Lanxess. The one-shot process was developed by several partners as part of the SpriForm project funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

KraussMaffei developed and contributed a manufacturing cell that enables fully automated production of the infotainment mount in a cycle time of less than 60 seconds. A linear robot equipped with a special gripper handles the heated composite inserts in an extremely reproducible sequence despite the very short transfer times. The Siebenwurst company engineered and built the mould. Special pins accurately position the heated insert inside the mould. The holes for the screw connections are pierced after forming to preserve the fabric, in other words they are not punched in a subsequent step. As a result, the glass fibers in the composite inserts are not cut, but rather pushed aside optimally so that the mechanical properties of the highly stressed region around the connection points remain intact, or even are improved in some cases.

The infotainment mount holds an amplifier and optionally a TV tuner. The weight of the installed devices can lead to considerable stresses during driving, particularly in the range of natural oscillation. This applies above all to the region around the points of connection to the body and the add-on parts. These areas therefore are reinforced with Tepex and designed such that, between the points of force transmission, the forces flow mainly via the continuous fibers of the composite material.

Picture: the prototype weighs nearly 50 percent less than its steel counterpart and can be produced in a large-scale manufacturing process(source: Lanxess AG)