Cannon's technology aims at increasing competitiveness by cutting production costs and improving product quality. Accurate tests conducted on the moulded items showed that they featured excellent physical and mechanical properties and performed much better in terms of quality and appearance. This innovative production process has been developed to meet the increasingly pressing demands by processors to have flexible, innovative tools that enable them to manufacture high quality products at lower costs.

The decision on which technologies and production processes are the most suitable to make plastic liners for car interiors (e.g. dashboards, door panels, armrests etc.), depends mostly on the type of raw materials that is going to be used. In turn, the choice of the material depends on the performance, quality and appearance that the finished product will have to provide.

Large-scale production is intended for mass consumption and needs to satisfy different requirements. The manufacturer must have access to adequate tools that can protect his competitiveness on the market, which means production processes that are reasonably inexpensive, suitably engineered and using raw materials that are cheaper but capable of guaranteeing excellent quality and performance.

Depending on the specific geometry of the piece to be moulded, the new Cannon system makes it possible to produce items in a thickness range from 0.8 to 3 mm. The geometry of the piece and its size have a considerable impact on the polymerisation time, which can vary between 40 and 180 seconds.

 

The RIM moulded Polyurethane item can be coloured in two different ways. One consists of mixing the colour paste in bulk with polyol prior to using it on the moulding line, which can therefore be built to use only two components (i.e. polyol and isocyanate). The second option is to treat the colour as a third independent component, which is mixed right in the mixing head ensuring higher manufacturing flexibility. That is a key benefit for those plants that need to change their production frequently or produce only small batches.

 

The availability of items composed of several layers of the same material will promote investment in the design of recycling processes that are simpler, safer, more effective and efficient and, most important, more competitive. In comparison to the existing technologies, the RIM process for moulding PU skins helps to save resources, improve product quality and reach better working conditions in the production shop, in order to protect the health and safety of all employees and the entire community.



Moulded skins are clearly superior in terms of performance, quality and appearance, soft and extremely pleasant to the touch and feature excellent mechanical and aesthetical properties. Production costs are also more competitive, providing an additional reason for this technology to be welcomed by and spread rapidly amongst PU processors.

 

 

 

Cannon's commitment in researching and developing this application has been specially targeted to those objectives without neglecting environmental issues. In the past few years Cannon's aim has been to develop a production process which would stand as an alternative to those already on the market, and which would meet the increasingly pressing demands by processors to have flexible, innovative tools for manufacturing high quality products at lower costs.

Comparison of Alternative System for Skin Production

 

	PU Skin	TPO/TPU Slush	PVC Slush	PUR Skin Spray
Feeling	++	+	++	++
Styling	++	++	++	++
Cost	++	-	+++	+
Emissions	++	++	-	-
Mechanical Properties	++	++	+	+
Smell	++	++	-	+/-