Farplas NFRP employed in Fiat door panel

Farplas (Kocaeli, Turkey), interior and exterior trims supplier for all automotive OEMS’s in Turkey, has won Turkish İnova Leagues 2017 Innovation Strategy Award given by Turkish Exporters Association.

Lightweight has been one of the major inovation strategies for Farplas. Although known as an injection molding company, Farplas says it adapts “integrated state of the art: technologies and usage of novel materials for lightweight focused production capabilities.” The technologies used include fiber form line for hybrid thermoplastic composites, microcellular physical and chemical foaming of plastics, infrared cured joining of complex trims and in-mold decoration.

In 2017 Farplas R&D finalized 2 Hybrid Thermoplastic composite (HTC) projects with Fiat-Tofas Turkey as the OEM partne. Both projects were funded by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Ankara, Turkey). One of the HTC projects comprised metal replacement using Lanxess laminates and thermoplastics. The other HTC approach implied a thermoformed NFRP (natural fiber reinforced thermoplastics) door panel and adaption of the NFR-HTC Door Pocket. Farplas partnered with Karel Tool Maker in the work.

The NFR-HTC Door Pocket benefits from the sustainable and eco route due to 50% natural fiber in composite sheet. Back injection step in fiber form process is an important part of the composite providing stiffness and barrier against adverse environments; it protects the edges of the composites from mechanical abrasion and shares load with NFRP composites.

To understand the adhesion development through overmolding, a non-isothermal screening procedure for bonding molten polypropylene (PP) to an IR heated thermoformable NFRP sheets has been developed. The method has been implemented to optimize boundary process temperatures for good bond formation as a function of NFRP sheet composition while optimizing IR heating system and injection cycle.

Farplas’ approach is a good example of highlighting different specs of HTC products such sustainability and NVH.

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Farplas is part of the AZL international composites network. This post is courtesy of the CompositesWorld and AZL Aachen GmbH media partnership.