Biography

Thomas Höfels graduated from the University of Economics and Business Administration in Vienna in 1992. After 11 years of international work experience in sales and marketing he returned to his Austrian home and joined the Senoplast group in December of 2003.

Thomas Höfels is responsible for all sheet and film thermoforming applications on passenger cars and pick-ups. As sales and marketing manager of Senco Europe, a member of the Senoplast group, he is also responsible for the promotion of Senotop® films in automotive exteriors and interiors.

Abstract of presentation

"Under the Skin" - Colour and Gloss Management

In car manufacturing paint lines make up for 50% of the floor space and a considerable part of the investment. 10 years ago Senoplast among other companies had the vision to replace
automotive paint with coextruded in-line coloured sheets and films for thermoforming.

This strategy was very successful in the market segment of licence free cars where thermoformed sheets are bonded onto an aluminium space frame. With these applications coextruders acquired a lot of experience regarding colour stability and UV-protection. In the future the lightweight space frame technology combined with coextruded sheets will be of interest for the growing market of no emission electric vehicles.

With regular passenger cars the vision to replace paint with coloured sheets and films for thermoforming is an ongoing challenge and some requirements are hard if not impossible to overcome. The presentation will go into detail regarding scratch and chemical resistance of thermoplastic materials versus paint and the limitations regarding colour matching of coextruded surfaces to paint master samples. In addition, general differences regarding the surface quality of paint and coextruded materials will be highlighted.

Despite many obstacles some series applications on passenger cars were achieved. The presentation will give an overview of the success stories and will point out where thermoforming replaced paint procedures and other plastic technologies. Some of these case studies show that thermoforming will be of increasing interest for the automotive industry. Even with high volume applications and short cycle time requirements thermoforming can under certain conditions achieve cost advantages for automotive customers.