Engineering Materials Live: Too good to miss

Featuring top-level suppliers providing cutting-edge design and engineering solutions, Engineering Materials Live promises to make a visit more than worthwhile.

The Engineering Materials Live Exhibition takes place on Thursday 19 September at The National Conference Centre, Solihull and it promises to offer huge value to visitors.


Selecting the right material for the right application is crucial to the success of any design project, which means working with suppliers that have the materials expertise and application knowledge - this is why Engineering Materials Live was created.

Looking to replace traditional materials for lighter, cheaper and smaller alternatives? Want to improve surface preparation processes for better adhesion? Then come and meet the high-quality exhibitor portfolio, which includes some of the UK’s leading suppliers in plastics, materials forming, advanced composites, lightweighting and rapid prototyping, and find the solutions.

Co-located with FAST Live – the UK’s only specialist fastening, bonding and assembly exhibition for design engineers, production professionals, manufacturers and fastener buyers – the event also includes CPD-accredited technical seminars offering detailed insight into some of the material and joining solutions available. The following provides just a small taste of what exhibitors will have on show.

Von Roll, a global market leader for products and systems for the electrical power generation, power transmission sector and the only company to offer the complete range of insulation products, composites, wires, resins, consulting, tests and services for the electrotechnical industry. Focusing on composites and ballistics, Von Roll provides a comprehensive spectrum of semi-finished and machined laminated products, from mica, glass, synthetic fibres, natural reinforcement materials, polyester to high temperature-resistant resin systems, many combinations are possible.

Precision Micro is a specialist in etching both titanium and aluminium, metals with favourable properties but which are challenging to machine with traditional sheet metalworking - such as stamping and laser cutting - and indeed etching.

For designers looking to manufacture burr- and stress-free metal parts with complex geometries, maintain the flexibility to make last-minute design changes and mass-produce prototypes quickly, photo chemical etching is the answer.

But there is another key advantage of etching, and that is the fact that through constant investment in R&D, leading practitioners like Precision Micro can apply the process to almost any metal – even those notoriously difficult to machine.

Its propriety processes are offered with all of the existing benefits of chemical etching, and at lead times measured in days, not months.

K.D. Feddersen will also be exhibiting.

The company recently made a significant contribution to the development of a composite C-Pillar reinforcement component, designed by Engenuity Ltd (ENG) and manufactured by Surface Generation Ltd (SG). This exploits the principle of thermoplastic overmoulding to achieve a step change in structural performance of the vehicle body-in-white (BIW). That is, to make judicious use of high performance, aligned, continuous fibre reinforced material only in localised areas where load paths demand their use, thus minimising the overall part cost. Elsewhere, more affordable short fibre reinforced material is used to realise complex features that add part stiffness through geometry and enable assembly.

The component possesses complex geometry and variable thickness (2mm to 8mm). It comprises four inserts of continuous fibre (CF) reinforced PA6 (SGL Group, Sigrafil C T50) overmoulded with a short fibre (SF) reinforced PA6 compound (K.D. Feddersen, AKROLOY PA ICF 40). The component is adhesively bonded to the BIW after its e-coat process. The CF inserts are stamp formed from a pre-consolidated organosheet produced with a highly orthotropic laminate stacking sequence to suit the in-service loading of the component.

The moulding surfaces of the forming tools are adjusted, using output from analytical studies conducted by SG, to compensate for process induced distortion. The CF inserts are positioned in the overmoulding tool. The tooling is designed and manufactured by SG and incorporates their patented “PtFS” thermal control technology. The tooling is closed and each of the 96 heater/cooler channels are zoned and their thermal cycle optimised. The component is cooled partly in mould and partly within an external fixture. SG and ENG worked together to develop test methods that would enable the optimum process conditions to be established in relation to the bond strength between the overmoulding material and the continuous fibre reinforced inserts. PtFS technology was exploited to achieve the necessary thermal conditions prior to overmoulding.

Engineering Materials

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