M A G A Z I N E
aluminium panels are heated to a point where they behave like plastic.
SPF forming for Aston Martin, McLaren, Mercedes, BMW and Porsche. There are numerous other customers that are very interested but we’re at full capacity at the moment so we’re actually turning customers away.” “There’s only been one year in the company’s history that there hasn’t been building taking place,” Conor says. “They’ve just finished one extension,
they’re about to start another for office space and then they’re looking for funding for two further projects after that. “We’re always trying to improve,” he says. “We started making one-off parts and got our times as fast as we could to increase productivity. We went to two-out parts out of the one die and we’re now looking at our first four-out part, which would be four panels out of
While the process has been around for a number of years, Autolaunch are world leaders in it. “We are the ones that have the furthest development in it,” says Conor. “There are others trying to get into it but we have perfected it. “We had five years of developing the process and now we know where we are, we know what we
need to make and we know how to make it,” says Conor.
“SPF allows us to do a lot more
than conventional processes would do,” he continues. “It is similar to hot forming but we can make far sharper angles and far bigger curves. It avoids or reduces splitting, tinning or deformation. This makes the parts stronger while using aluminium makes the car lighter. The customers like that, so much so that some manufacturers have sent over their entire design teams to see what we can do so they can incorporate that into future designs. “It’s a very expensive process and therefore it’s only the high-end vehicle manufacturers that we work with,” Conor says. “We do
PRESS: Super Plastic Formed aluminium panels
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