FRIEDRICHSHAFEN, GERMANY — Evonik Industries AG presented a new specialty molding compound during Fakuma in Friedrichshafen with which it plans to exploit the growing demand for automotive glazing.
The new material, called Plexiglas Resist AG 100, offers weight savings, freedom of design and the possibility of functional integration — reducing recess depth and assembly costs. Uwe Löffler, director of business development at Evonik, claims the new compound is the first acrylic specialty molding in the world for this application. The material, he added, offers “unparalleled brilliance and clearness.”
Plexiglas Resist is impact modified and has up to 30 times the breaking strength of mineral glass. “Our developers have also succeeded in significantly reducing the reversible haze that occurs in standard impact-modified products at very high and very low temperatures,” Löffler said.
The new specialty compound can be processed by injection molding, compression molding, or by extrusion with subsequent sheet thermoforming.
Löffler believes Plexiglas Resist AG also comes up trumps as the subsequent hard coating provides a number of technical advantages increasing the already good abrasion resistance further.
Unlike other thermoplastics, such as polycarbonate, which must undergo a two-step coating process to achieve UV and scratch resistance, the new Resist is inherently resistant to UV light and weathering and therefore requires a single coating only. “Also driving in the rain is far less noisy with PMMA glazing, compared to the use polycarbonate,” Löffler said.
The material meets all the requirements for automotive glazing, and, importantly, has also undergone and passed all tests to comply with the standards stipulated in the United Nations ECE R43 homologation program.
Evonik believes the lower carbon footprint of Plexiglas will convince automotive companies to use the material. At the end of a car's service life, Plexiglas can be completely recycled and reused in other transparent applications.