Cavity Filling for
Exclusive Cars
Cavity filling machines and plants are regularly supplied by Cannon USA to the leading car manufacturers in North America.
Cavity filling machines can be supplied by Cannon in a variety of configurations, for the most sophisticated robotized injection and for the simplest manual application. The AP10 is one of the available models.
PERHAPS THE EXCLUSIVE OWNERS OF A ROLLS ROYCE DO NOT KNOW THAT THE QUIET COMFORT OF THE VEHICLES THEY RIDE IS PARTIALLY DUE TO SMALL BUNS OF SOFT FOAM HIDDEN IN THE BODY OF THE CAR. AND PERHAPS THEY DON ' T KNOW EITHER THAT THOSE BUNS COME OUT FROM A CANNON HIGH PRESSURE FOAMING MACHINE MODEL AP10, THAT CANNON SOLD TO ROLLS ROYCE IN 2010. SINCE THEN CANNON HAS RISEN AS ONE OF THE MARKET LEADERS IN THIS TECHNOLOGY, CALLED“ CAVITY FILLING”: DIRECT INJECTION OF FAST REACTING POLYURETHANE FOAM INTO HOLLOW AND TINY SPACES OF THE CAR BODY.
Cavity illing – and we ' re not talking of dentist ' s practice – was once reserved to two different kind of vehicles: high level cars produced in relatively high volumes( think to Audi ' s A6 or Q5, both acoustically insulated by Cannon machines in China, Mexico and Brazil) or very high level cars produced in very small volumes( think to Rolls Royce). A quite small and fragmented market, characterized by a sort of continental divide between the two shores of the Atlantic Ocean. In North America cavity illing foams have mainly closed cells for waterproofness and they are dispensed in the lower part of the car body, to dampen noise coming from the road. In Europe OEMs( mostly from Germany) prefer to upholster the pillars of their car bodies with very soft open cells foam, mean to dampen airborne noise. All this explains the scattered diffusion of cavity illing technology among Automotive OEMs. Not that they lack alternative technologies: soft baf les are widely used as acoustic insulators. These ready-made buns are placed in the car body and then they expand when the car body is heated in the oven at the paint shop, illing the cavity.
New Energy Saving Processes Demand New Cavity Filling Formulations However the future of cavity illing seems today brighter than ever. Saving energy is a compelling need for everybody, including the producers of the most expensive cars; to reduce energy costs in the paint shop a new breed of paints, requiring lower baking temperatures in the ovens, is coming up. But at such lower temperatures conventional baf les will not expand. That ' s where Polyurethane cavity illing formulations step in successfully. And – guess what? – Cannon is ready. Cannon is currently the only worldwide supplier of machines for any kind of cavity illing Polyurethane formulations.
Open cells, closed cells, ratio 24:1 or 16:1( patented by Dow), ratio 2:1 or even 1:1 – Cannon has the right machine for it. Manual application? Checked. Robotic application with cameras guiding the robot to the injection holes? Checked. Even budget is not anymore a problem. An automatic or manual cavity illing plant built for high productivity according to the strict OEM ' s speci ications can easily require a budget between 500,000 to over 1 million Euro. But Cannon has egregious machines for cavity illing in one tenth of that budget, making cavity illing worth and affordable for low volumes production or for lower end cars.
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