The Eurecat technology centre has tested integrating electronics and plastic materials to craft new, more sustainable products with high added value, low weight, built-in sensors and advanced features in a plant set up at its Cerdanyola site which manufactures these parts using a cutting-edge technology known as plastronics.
“This innovation is much in demand and extremely significant in the automotive, aeronautics, packaging, consumer electronics, medical, sports and other industries,” points out Eva Fité, head of Business Development for the Materials Processing and Capital Equipment Market. She stresses that this technology “is a growing opportunity for the capital goods, consumer goods and light tools industries.”
“By combining functional printing and hybridisation of electronic components with more conventional processing methods such as injection moulding, we can achieve lightweight devices with new features embedded in parts with complex geometries,” comments Iker Arroyo, head of the In Mould Electronics line in Eurecat’s Functional Printing and Embedded Devices Unit.
Plastronics thus “offers businesses the chance to fashion products with high added value which include more complex services, connect with each other to share information in real time via multi-technology options and feature attractive and functional designs which can also be mass-produced,” he adds.
“Using this technology enables a degree of integration of components which results in lighter, more compact and smaller parts,” notes Paul Lacharmoise, head of the Functional Printing and Embedded Devices Unit at Eurecat. Plastronics “is a revolution which caters to the needs and challenges of the new mobility.”
This is the case of the pilot line for manufacturing injected parts developed for the automotive industry in the PLASTFUN project. They include lighting effects embedded in printed circuits containing LEDs coupled with breakthroughs in nanotexturisation of parts with built-in printed sensor technology.
This technology, also known as In-Mould Electronics, “is particularly relevant for the mobility industry because it enables the development of new, smarter, more efficient and also more sustainable products,” says Paul Lacharmoise.
Hence Eurecat “has recently developed plastronics capabilities, competences, knowhow and infrastructures which have made our organisation a leader in these technologies including on an international level,” he points out.
