Stahl's Stay Clean and Stay Silent technologies address modern design and mobility trends. Stay Clean offers a protective coating for leather, synthetic materials and alternative materials, ensuring easy maintenance of lighter, white interiors, which are becoming popular in contemporary design. Stay Silent provides anti-squeak coatings for automotive interiors, enhancing the comfort and tranquility essential in electric vehicles (EVs). These innovations support the shift toward lighter color schemes and the specific requirements of EVs, contributing to a cleaner, quieter and more sustainable future in vehicle design.

Three commonly discussed topics are design trends, sustainability and lightweighting. They are all isolated challenges within themselves, where we as experts in metal processing are relied on to contextualize them into one deliverable concept. We will discuss how the implementation of digitally and optimally designed components reduces not only mass and embodied carbon but also tooling cost and lead times. We look to translate practices traditionally associated with low-volume builds, for mass-production competitiveness. We will also stress the importance of an OEM supplier communication shift from buyer to engineer to enable the uptake of these new structures, be it functional or a new aesthetic trend.

UNICORN is an EU-funded project to design, develop and validate innovative green and circular technologies for automotive electronics on four industrial use cases in automotive electronics (casing, dashboard, set and door, tire) as well as Mobility as a Service solutions.

How sustainable can coated materials be? Can they be sustainable at all? Recyclability is one of the major topics these days but is very complex when it comes to coated or decorated components. But what are the main drivers in calculating the carbon footprint of a component? Is recycling the only key factor? Do process chains and high durability maybe even compensate for the lower recyclability? These are some of the leading questions that are currently investigated in various projects at the Kunststoff-Institut in Lüdenscheid. How to calculate the footprint combined with investigations on processes and influencing factors will lead to a holistic understanding of how to make coated components more sustainable without a negative influence on quality and design.

The McLaren W1 is both a celebration of the excellence of the iconic McLaren F1 and McLaren P1 and the manifestation of McLaren’s World Championship mindset. The W1 offers a supreme track driving experience as well as unparalleled driving enjoyment on the road. It pushes the boundaries of real supercar performance with the most advanced aerodynamic platform of any McLaren road car and extensive use of advanced lightweight materials. This presentation focuses on its unique interior design challenges, offering an insight into the design and ergonomics solutions that help provide the purest driver connection, and the innovation in materials used inside the W1.

The automotive sector is increasingly adopting eco-friendly solutions, including for injected parts in automotive interiors. As a major environmental contributor, the industry is striving to use greener, sustainable materials while maintaining quality. This aligns with the growing biopolymer market and the use of natural, bio-based and secondary raw materials. A Portuguese consortium has employed gum rosin resin derivatives as compatibilizers for polymer components due to their thermal stability and compatibility with extrusion and injection molding processes. These derivatives are versatile, multifunctional natural raw materials that enhance the performance and bio-content of synthetic and biodegradable polymeric matrices, yielding significant benefits.

PP is used in large quantities in automobile parts and is suitable for recycling. Further growth is expected in the future. However, when PP is used as a base for decorative films, challenges have included weak ink adhesion and the difficulty of maintaining the balance between the high-quality design, physical properties and moldability. DNP has overcome these challenges by leveraging the printing technology and know-how it has cultivated over many years to establish a mass-production technology for PP-based automotive decorative films.

This presentation explores the innovative application of photogrammetry in assessing the stretch behavior of functional inserts during the thermoforming process, a critical aspect in the production of injection molded electronics (IME). IME technology, which integrates electronic functionalities into 3D molded structures, has seen rapid advances, but challenges persist in ensuring the precise deformation of functional inserts during thermoforming. We introduce a novel methodology employing photogrammetry, a technique that uses photographs to measure distances and establish maps and models. Our approach allows for accurate, non-contact measurement of the stretch distribution of functional inserts, providing valuable insights for optimizing thermoforming parameters.

As a leading surface finishing brand, we are committed to promoting sustainability, enhancing environmental performance and resource efficiency, and adopting ambitious frameworks. Our presentation covers two key aspects: sustainable plating for the automotive industry, Cr(VI)-free and non-PFAS, offering durability and quality; a carbon footprint study of electroplating, analyzing materials and energy use for optimization, including a comparison with alternative technologies.

The demand for new concepts that contribute to making the automotive cabin a 'third living space' has increased in recent years. In this way, new solutions to enhance comfort in the automotive interior will be presented: innovative approaches to thermal management within surfaces of automotive interiors, focusing on the combination of active heating systems, based on printed electronics and technical textiles, and innovative functional materials; and new concepts with suction function to hold objects on the center console during braking and dynamic acceleration of the vehicle, highlighting the advantages of additive manufacturing technologies in the automotive sector.

The damage analysis of coated and uncoated plastics is a complex task and requires a great deal of specialist knowledge of the individual processes as well as about methods for determination. The Kunststoff-Institut has many years of experience in both fields and has created an AI-supported solution in cooperation with the AI specialist d.velop AG to find solutions to problems more quickly and comprehensively.

In 2017, the REACH regulation limited the use of hexavalent chrome (Cr6) for chrome plating and defined a deadline for its use in 2030 in the European Union. Since then, many companies have tried alternative manufacturing methods for plastic components. Taiyo took the lead and, after developing a chrome plating method 100％ free of hexavalent chrome in pre-treatment and electroplating – mass production of which began in 2022 – has been improving it and adding new features such as the possibility of PC/ABS chrome plating or chrome colors virtually identical to those that can be achieved with hexavalent chrome.