Product category:
Materials and components
News Release from: DuPont (UK) | Subject: Zytel 103 HSL
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 11 April 2006
Nylon adds style to new Ford Transit
Heat-stabilised nylon helps make headlamp bezel an eye-catching design element of the new Ford Tyransit front-end.
Headlamp bezels for the Ford Transit that will make its world premiere at the Commercial Vehicle Show in Birmingham on 25th April 2006 is made of Zytel 103 HSL, a heat-stabilised nylon 66 from DuPont The headlamp, the first to be fully developed and manufactured in Turkey, is supplied by Turkish company Mako, an automotive electrical component manufacturer owned by Magnetti Marelli (Italy)
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 15 Aug 2000 at 8.00am (UK)
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The headlamp bezel is an eye-catching design element of the vehicle front-end, and thus is important in its overall styling.
The heat-resistant grade of Zytel used in the application provides the required amount of strength and dimensional stability for the part.
Such properties let the bezel's edge precisely follow the contours of the adjacent lens, even when temperatures within the headlamp unit reach peaks of 150C.
Thanks to the material's ease of flow, the injection-moulded part is produced in short cycle times, despite thin walls and long flow distances.
The high impact resistance of Zytel means that small impacts will have no effect on the part's performance.
Mako created an appealing and high quality finish for the part by using a silver-metallic paint, which can be efficiently applied to the polymer as it requires no additional pretreatment, such as the use of a primer.
Mako's Headlamp Project Leader, Engin Uckardas, said: "Ford gave us an outer view of what it wanted the new headlamp for the Ford Transit to look like".
"Mako then fully developed the outer styling and designed the headlamp's interior".
"DuPont Engineering Polymers supported us here in Turkey all the way in the design and production of the new bezel, including mould flow analysis and moulding trials".
"The moulding trials physically took place at Magnetti Marelli's plant in Italy, with the support of local DuPont specialists, working in liaison with DuPont staff in Turkey".
"It was this consultative support, along with the combination of properties offered by the material in terms of mechanical and thermal performance, ease of processing and surface finish, which made us choose Zytel over polycarbonate for this application, despite the latter's historical usage for bezels".
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