Engineering news
A composite, press-formed door design that offers 30% weight reduction compared to current aluminium models made in the West Midlands will be unveiled at a major international composite show in Paris.
Manufacturing company Penso, which employs 230 people across sites in Coventry, London and Pune, India, will showcase two new lightweight advancements it has pioneered for the rail and automotive sectors at JEC World 2016 (March 8-10).
Michael Collins, marketing and sales Director at Penso, said that the firm is currently in talks with train manufacturers about adopting the breakthrough with significant interest set to follow at the global event.
Collins said: “A lot of firms have been looking at R&D into this area, but very few – if indeed any – have gone to the next level and actually invested in technology and the experts needed to produce a lightweight rail door out of composite material.”
He added: “We designed our own tooling and press formed the door at our dedicated composite facility in Coventry. They have been tested by a number of third party experts and come out as being robust and offering up to 30% weight savings.
Penso aims to achieve millions of Euros in new orders by 2017.
The company said that it has also developed a manufacturing technique to produce carbon fibre components quickly and cost effectively.
This process has reduced manufacturing times to just minutes, making the use of composite materials more competitive against the traditional steels, aluminium and mixed materials commonly used in the automotive, defence and rail sectors.
As part of its growth in this area, the company has invested £7 million in developing its existing building and installing a new carbon fibre high volume factory, a new plant for lightweight structures and machining centres for rapid tooling.
A further £2 million has been spent on new plant and capital equipment to aid with the manufacture of machine tools and studios.
Collins said: “In addition to the train door, we will also be displaying some of the work we have carried out as part of the £16.8m Varcity programme to create affordable carbon fibre body architecture.”
The Varcity project aims to create new vehicle body architectures for premium city cars of 2020, which will utilise the structural performance and weight advantanges of advanced Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic based composites. The project is made up of a consortium of partners including Jaguar Land Rover, the Warwick Manufacturing Group and the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.
Collins said: “Together, we have researched and developed new composite solutions to aid with industry’s drive to reduce C02 and Nitrogen Oxide emissions.”