"Automotive is a single market that pulls all stakeholders in the injection molding industry." On the relationship between the automobile market and the injection molding machine market, the industry is so expressed.

Take the American injection molding machine market for example, stimulated by the volume of automobile, American machinery manufacturers showed an optimistic attitude to the machinery market.

In the fall of 2017, two consecutive hurricanes, Harvey and Irma, hit Texas and Florida, causing severe damage to major cities. Automakers' sales rose sharply in September as many vehicles were damaged and replaced.

The new vehicle platform has greatly stimulated the sales of injection molding equipment. Among them, Vam Battenfeld's automobile level one, two, three customers continue to open new plants, purchase new equipment, even a one-time purchase of up to 100 sets of equipment. Attention to the automotive market has generally changed their original forecasts for 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 grow 1 percent to 85.7 million units in 2018, with newly launched passenger car sales expected to maintain growth in some of the world's major markets, the German automotive industry association (VDA) forecast. In 2018, new passenger car sales in Europe will continue the high performance of 2017, with cumulative sales in the EU and European Free Trade Association countries expected to reach 15.6 million units.

While the U.S. new vehicle market, including traditional passenger cars and light trucks/SUVs, will be lackluster in 2018, with a projected decline of 2% to around 16.8 million units, this is still a relatively high result. Other markets, such as China, India, Russia and Brazil, will continue to grow. China will easily retain its position as the world's largest single market, with sales growth expected to reach 2% to 24.6 million units. India's new car market is expected to grow by 10 per cent to 3.6m units, possibly outpacing Germany for the first time. Russia and Brazil will also continue to show recovery.

Injection molding process and automotive components

The relationship between injection molding processes and automotive components will be discussed in the following examples.

Automotive lightweight has become known to the public. Engineering plastics have made important contributions to automotive lightweight, typical representatives are microfoamed plastics, low density materials, thin-walled materials and so on.

Take Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan for example, it uses an injection molding of Mucell door interior panel skeleton, PU reaction foam layer in the middle, the surface is the cortex.

Ford also uses MuCell microfoam injection molding technology in C-MAX, GrandCMAX, S-MAX, Mondeo and Galaxy models. Bubbles are filled in the process of parts forming to form a very fine honeycomb structure, which not only saves plastic materials, but also reduces weight, and does not affect the stability of parts.

In addition to the car interior exterior decoration, the car tail door has also been developed to all plastic. It is understood that the plastic tail door is not only strong, but also highly integrated, can be the antenna, high brake light, glass, windshield, taillight, camera, electric tail door switch, license plate, license plate lights and so on integrated together at present, the plastic tail door has been applied in many models, generally speaking, the plastic tail door inner plate using long glass fiber reinforced PP(LGF+PP), The outer plate and spoiler are made of PP or TPO, all molded by injection process, and then assembled by gluing process.

The automotive lightweight trend is also driving the growth of fiber composite materials. At present, LFT injection molding process has become the mainstream process of thermoplastic composite structural parts and functional parts for passenger cars; SMC and LFT-D are the main two technologies of battery housing development in the new energy vehicle has been used in batch.

It can be seen that with the development of the lightweight trend of the automobile industry, the relationship between the automobile and plastics is increasingly close, and correspondingly, the relationship between the automobile and the injection molding process and injection molding equipment is also increasingly deep. The two complement each other, automobile sales to stimulate the injection molding machine industry, driving the development of the injection molding machine market is obvious.