When Choosing Lightweight Materials, Don’t Forget Your Coatings!

Advanced materials are forefront in virtually every design project today. With electrification across every industry – most notably in the transportation sector – lightweighting is essential. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the automotive industry where every ounce is important. It is the key to addressing that great nemesis: range anxiety.

Unfortunately, the coatings are generally ignored.

But in Formula 1 – where every gram counts – coatings are carefully selected to provide superior performance at weights less than one-tenth that of a conventional passenger car.

Ultraviolet (UV), Electron Beam (EB), and UV-LED, also known as energy curable technology, was developed in the late 1920’s by Edwin Newton of the B. F. Goodrich Company to "vulcanize" natural rubber, so it born of the automotive industry. UV curing began to evolve in the 1960's, with significant commercialization in the 1970’s driven by the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. Since that time, improvements in chemistry and processing technology has made it one of the most sustainable technologies used in manufacturing from aerospace to vehicle components.

In this presentation we will examine how UV/EB technology provides greater durability with thinner films, which means lower weight, translating to lower energy demands for an EV. In addition, we’ll show how UV/EB curable technology enables innovative manufacturing processes that consume less energy yet meet or exceed air quality standards without requiring add-on pollution controls.

Well provide case studies which demonstrate higher throughput efficiency, reduced waste and reduced CO2 emissions resulting in the recognition of this technology by several regulatory agencies as a clean process alternative. This means that more parts can be produced with less energy and lower environmental impact which translates to savings during the manufacturing process and energy savings over the life of the vehicle.