Wilhelmsdorf, Germany based plastic processor Jacob Plastics Group has developed the MultiDecoMolding process that it says offers new design possibilities for decorative automotive interior applications. Designers can deceive the eye, Jacob Plastics maintains, by using MultiDecoMolding to produce components in one piece that "look like they're assembled from different parts".
The MultiDecoMolding process has already found a commercial application on the latest Opel Astra car, for the cover of the central console, as part of the trim covers for the Delta 2 platform.
The process is used to stunning effect on the Opel Astra parts that Jacob Plastics supplies via Johnson Controls. Of the various Astra models for which Jacob Plastic moulds the central console covers, the Cosmo, GSI and Sport versions are probably the most exacting, involving a combination of different structures and contrasting colours.
MultiDecoMolding was developed by Jacob Plastics specifically for these kinds of demanding tasks. The company says that its process produces better quality parts than the previous painted Astra central console covers, without some of the difficulties incurred with painting.
Key to the MultiDecoMolding process is a form of in-mould application of different decorative elements to a single moulded component. Jacob Plastics says the technique overcomes "creative limitations" such as diffusion, blurred interfaces at points of colour change in multiple-colour parts and the problem of clearance when changing film motives in outline and border areas.
Jacob Plastics said a previous drawback with decorative elements that were close to or interconnected with each other was that, often, in practice, they were separated by gaps, instead of being "closely affiliated".
This has been overcome with the new technique, which uses back injection moulding to apply and combine films or other decorative elements with different motives, structures or in different materials to the moulded substrate within a single moulding process. This eliminates the need to apply these features in separate post-moulding bonding operations with clips, welding or adhesion.
Jacob Plastics says that one of its future plans is to use MultiDecoMolding to apply electroluminescent foil as a functional element under a wood appearance surface dcor. This would allow a park distance control to remain invisible while driving normally, yet become visible through the dcor when making parking manoeuvres.
As Jacob Plastic Group is also a thermoformer, it produces the three thermoformed FIM insert films itself. These are placed into Reis positioning equipment with precision down to tenths of 1mm. A Reis multi-axial articulated robot then places the insert films held in the positioning equipment into a 550 tonne Engel injection moulding machine to mould the complete decorated covers.
The MultiDecoMolding trademark was registered in the EU trademark database by Manfred Jacob Beteiligungen on 27 November 2008, with expiry date 25 October 2017.
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