Ready-clad automotive interior parts are produced in the Dolphin system

Engel has developed a moulding system for making automotive dashboards in one shot. Working with materials suppliers P-Group in Italy, BASF in Germany and mouldmaker Georg Kaufmann in Switzerland, Engel has developed the Dolphin system for use in its Duo Combi range of two-platen two-component moulding machines. The system makes it possible to produce ready-clad large automotive interior mouldings all within the injection moulding machine.

The Dolphin system was demonstrated in action at the company’s symposium in the St Valentin plant in Austria on a 2 kg part – equivalent to “half an instrument panel” – on a 1,500 tonne Duo Combi machine, as a new alternative system to existing PVC slush and polyurethane skin coating systems. Using a double daylight mould, a rotary central block and a positive mould on both sides of the tool, the Engel Coinmelt compression injection technology is used to injection mould a glass reinforced BASF PBT/ASA part as a first step.

Subsequent moulding is of a P-Group Pibiflex thermoplastic polyester that is foamed with the Mucell microcellular foam process, with the mould from Georg Kaufmann opened up by several millimetres against the textured mould surface to form a compact outer grained skin surface.