Luxury / Prestige Automotive
Vacuum formed assemblies for interiors including A Pillar, B Pillar, C Pillar, Dashboard Fascia, Header liners, door linings, tunnel stowage consoles, trinket trays, glove box liners.
Most of these items are subsequently covered with leather, but are supplied with all associated fasteners and fixings already in place, to allow fitment to the vehicle directly from the packaging box.
Vacuum formed assemblies for exteriors including Wheelarch liners, undertrays, plenums, number plate mounting plinths.
Polyurethane mouldings for seat foams, overmoulded instrument panel assemblies, overmoulded tunnel console parts.
Client Brief
The brief was to produce a wheel arch liner to accommodate a 21” DIA wheel (deep draw required) from one piece of material, ideally to be moulded in pairs (LH/RH). This would offer a substantial cost saving against other suppliers moulding in two pieces with an assembly operation.
The Solution
Material grade structure to produce the depth of draw required meant that Thermotec had to develop a dedicated polypropylene with their material supplier to achieve the design. As wheel diameters tend to be standard across the ranges, the client was reluctant to invest in dedicated tooling to accommodate the different mounting strategies for each vehicle. Thermotec developed the moulding tooling to have interchangeable sections that could be changed easily, utilising a “common” high value section of the tooling across the range. The variants were then determined at the CNC routing stage via dedicated CNC programmes. With 28 variants of wheel arch liner (front and rear), this represented a substantial saving to the client in tooling investment.
Further to this, Thermotec source and fit all hardware including air deflectors, fuse/bulb access hatches, NVH pads, rub strips and fasteners. This allows the client to receive the item as a complete assembly that can be fitted directly on the track.
