Plastics has become an essential component of automotive industry to reduce weight of a vehicle that increases fuel efficiency.
The growing need of plastic and related composites is helping out to drive a revolution to fulfill the requirement of automotive hardware in highly effective manner. The manufacturers in automotive industry make use of plastics on a large scale to develop innovative products, to set new standards for the industry in terms of safety, design and environmental performance and to deliver excellent value to the customers. Lightweight plastics provide freedom to the designers and automotive engineers to deliver innovative concepts in highly cost-effective manner.
Advantages of plastic in
automotive industry
Plastics possess various features as they are highly durable and strong by nature, resistant to chemical and harsh environmental conditions, electrically and thermally conductive, soft and flexible that can be molded into any shape and size, transparent, translucent and opaque in nature, recyclable and extremely
cost-effective.
Plastics: from automotive design perspective
With the development of technologies, more and more metallic components are being replaced by plastics. The use of plastics is growing day by day owing to the cost pressures and the ease of manufacturing companies to cut costs my optimising material content in components using the high-end software at the design stage. From a design point of view, plastics offer numerous advantages to the automotive designers. It offers a light-weight and economical solution for both structural as well as aesthetic automotive applications. Plastics offer a lightweight and structurally stable solution that helps to reduce the weight of the vehicles. Most of the automobile components and parts are made up of plastics which make the vehicles lighter in weight. This makes the automobiles more fuel efficient as compared to the heavier one. Formed and mouldable plastics allow the automotive designers to design smooth and aerodynamic body panels that enhance passenger comfort.
The thickness of automotive components such as headlights, dashboards, etc, is measured from all the segments to ensure perfect balancing, perfect appearance and to fit the component into the vehicle firmly.
Testing of plastic components
To produce the high-quality vehicle, it is necessary to test each and every part firmly to deliver the best quality to the customers. These components can be tested in a highly effective manner using different testing instruments. A different testing instrument is used to verify different component of automotive. For example, measuring the thickness of the components without deforming is quite a difficult task. The transparent cover of the headlights of a car is made from PET or polycarbonate and has a complicated curve on which, the thickness at various points is conventionally impossible to measure without cutting the component.
Why is it important to measure the thickness of plastic automotive components? The thickness of automotive components such as headlights, dashboards, etc, is measured from all the segments to ensure perfect balancing, perfect appearance and to fit the component into the vehicle firmly.
The destructive way of thickness measurement using conventional gauges may not be accurate sometimes. Magnamike-8600, an instrument by Olympus, USA has made this thing possible as it works on the principle of Hall-Effect. With this instrument continuous measurements are possible all along the surface, accurately.
The technology advancement has
made the things easier and at the same time has raised the levels of accuracy and precision.
Article courtesy: Presto Stantest
Pvt Ltd.
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