Summerer Toolmaker - Moldmaker, Plastic Glazing

Smart fortwo - 1.2qm polycarbonat-window
  Summerer IMPmore-Tool


LG SL9000 LED TV


Mercedes Benz GL X164

Why Plastic Glazing?

Many design studies of the car manufacturers demonstrate a trend to large transparent areas. Because of several reasons there is a demand to replace traditional glass by plastic material, specificaly polycarbonate. This facts have caused some development initiatives in the supplier industry in order to prepare all technologies, which are needed to realize plastic glazing applications in the automotive industry. There are various benefits plastic glazing can provide versus glass:

• Weight reduction up to 50 % results in a lower fuel consumption
• Using injection molding technology automotive window systems can be designed with functional integration and 3 dimensional shape
• The excellent impact behaviour of polycarbonate increases the safety for the passengers as well as the security of the vehicle.

Up to now it was not possible to manufacture large plastic parts with low inner stress level using the injection molding process, as the residual stresses result in negative influences on the coating quality, which is necessary for UV and abrasion durability.

IMPmore® , a dynamic injection-compression molding process, developed by Summerer allows the production of large, thin transparent parts with low residual stresses. This process prevents from damages of the coating caused by high inner stresses. In addition to this advantage large optical parts can be produced on injection molding machines with relatively low clamping forces (e.g. a 1qm-window requires only a clamping force of 20000 kN).