Development of polyurethane beads for skin material for automobile interiors that help improve automotive fuel efficiency and conserve energy during parts manufacturing
- 2013/11/05 Announcements
Adopting new technology, Sanyo Chemical has developed a new product, THERPUS F, polyurethane beads for powder slush molding that are used as a skin material in automobile interiors including in instrument panels.
The new product meets the need in the auto industry for lower environmental impact. It offers a thinner skin for automobile interiors and a lower mold temperature at time of molding. Its features are as follows.
(1)Achieves an approximately two-fold increase in resin strength and a thinner skin. Because it enables a 50% maximum reduction in skin thickness over existing interior skins, it helps improve fuel efficiency by reducing weight in the instrument panel and other parts of automobile interiors.
(2)Able to form a skin at a mold temperature of 30-40 ºC lower than previously possible while maintaining the molded skin’s heat resistance. As a result, thermal energy can be reduced at the time of molding, and because the cooling time it takes to reach a temperature at which peeling can be manually performed after molding has been reduced, production efficiency can be increased. This also leads to a longer service life for the mold, which is subject to repeated heating and cooling.
(3)Enables the skin to be overstitched like genuine leather and the twist of the thread carved on the mold to be accurately replicated. Therefore the interior design is improved.