Solutions for polycarbonate automotive glazing

Dr. Sven Gestermann, Bayer MaterialScience AG

Polycarbonate glazing offers several advantages against glass in automotive applications – e. g. weight savings and freedom of design.

However, the manufacturing of polycarbonate automotive glazing parts requires careful consideration of the different steps of the process chain. In this presentation we will focus on the polycarbonate materials as well as the injection molding technologies. Both have been especially developed to meet the OEM-requirements for automotive glazing. In many applications the 2- component injection molding process is applied in order to add functionality and decoration to the glazing parts by back molding with the second (black) component. The requirements for each of the two components as well as the delicate fine tuning of their properties in order to optimize their interaction will be presented. The solution for a material combination tailor made for large area parts will be demonstrated using the example of a recently released polycarbonate panoramic roof. The processing of such large parts also implies high requirements to the injection molding process. The injection compression molding processes allow today the molding of large parts (>> 1m2) with high optical quality.

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The Authors

Dr. Sven Gestermann Key Account Manager Bayer MaterialScience AG 1990 - 1996 Studies of chemistry at the university of Bonn 1996 - 1999 Graduation at Kekulé Institut for organic Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Bonn 1999 Postdoc at National ... Read more