Global industrial ventilation brand seeks metal replacement components
25 August 2017
If you are the brand leader, you need to demonstrate innovation - replacing aluminium components with highly technical polymers improved performance, reduced weight and costs.
Using cast aluminium for components is more expensive than polymer
Which is why the leading brand in industrial ventilation products was looking for a partner to help revise their current product range from cast aluminium to injected plastic. Aluminium has certain technical characteristics which years ago couldn’t be matched by plastics. However the innovation in polymers over the last decade has seen may metal components replaced by stronger, lighter plastic parts.
Cast aluminium components corrode
Within the efficiency of a ventilation system, the speed of the fan and air movement is influenced by the drag of the blade surface. Using aluminium fan blades meant this degraded over time as the aluminium oxidised and the once smooth surface becomes corroded.
Industrial fans and components require specialist technical knowledge
Tex Plastics are regarded as the experts in plastic moulding for ventilation, large ‘specialist’ components and metal replacement. Which meant with the OEM looking for a partner to develop their new product range, Tex Plastics with their technical design team, was the natural choice.
The technical design team worked closely with the product designers
Working collaboratively to ensure the newly developed components would enhance the performance of the range of industrial fans being refreshed, the technical tolerances were defined. The selection of technical polymer and development of tooling was modelled to ensure the tolerances and performance required could be achieved. The technical design team worked closely with the product designers to develop the optimum solution was arrived at.
The result was a lighter, stronger better performing product at lower unit cost
With the entire product assembly being reviewed within the same process, many small incremental changes were able to be incorporated to optimise the sub-assembly. The overall result was a more resilient product at a lower overall manufactured cost and greater performance over its lifetime.