2074. Air for Cost and Weight Savings: Body Sealer Air Entrapment Process
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Paper
Abstract
With the present and future CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) requirements, automotive companies are being put under more and more pressure to increase the fuel efficiency of their car lines. The most attractive and often most challenging area affecting the CAFE requirements is reduction in vehicle weight. The task is to reduce the weight of the automobile and still make the vehicle affordable, comfortable, and safe for the consumer. The accepted cost within the automotive industry to remove one pound from any given vehicle model line is over $250,000. To help meet the challenge of reducing vehicle weight, the Nordson Corporation has developed a method for mechanically foaming interior, plastisol based body sealers. The process is called FoamMix A/T. The FoamMix A/T equipment has been used in trials at various automotive assembly plants over the past two years. The automobiles produced in these plants typically use up to eight pounds of interior body sealer per vehicle. Foaming the body sealer while still maintaining material performance reduced each vehicle weight by three pounds. This weight savings provided a positive effect on the CAFE requirements for these model lines.
