"In the injection molding machine industry, automobiles are a single market that can pull all stakeholders." This is what the industry says about the relationship between the automotive market and the injection molding machine market.

Take the US injection molding machine market as an example. Stimulated by the volume of automobiles, US machinery manufacturers have shown an optimistic attitude towards the machinery market.

It is understood that in the fall of 2017, two consecutive hurricanes "Harvey" and "Irma" hit Texas and Florida, causing serious damage to major cities. Many vehicles were damaged and needed to be replaced, and automakers' September sales rose markedly.

The new automotive platform has greatly stimulated the sales of injection molding machine equipment. Among them, WITTMANN BATTENFELD's first-, second-, and third-tier automotive customers continue to open new factories, purchase new equipment, and even purchase 100 pieces of equipment at one time. Everyone's attention to the automotive market generally changed their original estimates of the injection molding machine market.

How much influence does the automotive market have on the injection molding machine industry?

Global car sales may rise again in 2018

Global car sales are expected to increase by 1% to 85.7 million units in 2018, with newly launched passenger car sales expected to keep growing in some of the world's major markets, the German Association of the Automobile Manufacturers (VDA) forecasts. In 2018, the sales of new passenger cars in Europe will continue the high performance of 2017, and the cumulative sales in the EU and EFTA countries are expected to reach 15.6 million units.

Although the U.S. new car market in 2018, including traditional passenger cars and light trucks/SUVs, will lack vitality, the decline is forecast to reach 2% to about 16.8 million units, but this is also a relatively high result. Other markets, such as China, India, Russia, Brazil, etc., will continue to grow. China will easily maintain its position as the world's largest single market, with sales expected to rise by 2% to 24.6 million vehicles; India's new car market is expected to increase by 10% to 3.6 million vehicles, or surpass Germany for the first time; Russia and Brazil also will continue to show a recovery trend.

Injection molding process and auto parts

Below we discuss the relationship between the injection molding process and automotive parts from a few examples.

Lightweight cars are already known to the public. Engineering plastics have made important contributions to the lightweight of automobiles. Typical representatives are micro-foamed plastics, low-density materials, and thin-walled materials.

Taking the Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan as an example, it uses a one-time injection-molded Mucell door interior panel skeleton, with a PU reaction foam layer in the middle and a skin layer on the surface.

Ford also uses MuCell micro-foaming injection molding technology for C-MAX, GrandCMAX, S-MAX, Mondeo and Galaxy models, which fills air bubbles during the molding process of parts to form a very fine honeycomb structure, which not only saves plastic materials , again reducing weight without compromising part stability.

In addition to the interior and exterior of the car, the tailgate of the car has also developed to full plastic. It is understood that the plastic tailgate is not only strong, but also highly integrated. It can integrate antennas, high brake lights, glass, windshields, tail lights, cameras, electric tailgate switches, license plates, license lights, etc. The all-plastic tailgate has been used in many models. Generally speaking, the inner panel of the all-plastic tailgate uses long glass fiber reinforced PP (LGF+PP), the outer panel and spoiler use PP or TPO, and all use injection molding Process molding and then assembling using a gluing process.

The development of automotive lightweighting trends has also led to the growth of fiber composites. At present, the LFT injection molding process has become the mainstream process for thermoplastic composite structural parts and functional parts for passenger vehicles; the development of battery casings based on SMC and LFT-D processes has been applied in batches on new energy vehicles.

It can be seen from this that with the development of the lightweight trend in the automotive industry, the relationship between automobiles and plastics has become increasingly close. Correspondingly, the relationship between automobiles and injection molding processes and injection molding equipment has become deeper and deeper. The two complement each other. It is obvious that automobile sales stimulate the injection molding machine industry and drive the development of the injection molding machine market.