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Automotive interior refers to interior components and automotive products used for interior modification of automobiles that have certain decorative and functional, safety, and engineering attributes.

The automotive interior system is an important part of the car body, and the design workload of the interior system accounts for more than 60% of the workload of the car styling design, far more than the shape of the car, is one of the most important parts of the body. In this article, we will give you an explanation of the materials and processes of common automobile dashboards.

The automobile instrument panel consists of a variety of gauges, and indicators (speed odometer, tachometer, oil pressure gauge, water temperature gauge, fuel gauge, charging meter, etc.), especially the driver with warning light alarms, etc., to provide the driver with required information on the operating parameters of the car.

Dashboards can be categorized as hard plastic dashboards, blister dashboards, and semi-rigid foam dashboards according to comfort.

1) Hard plastic dashboard

A rigid automotive instrument panel is a one-piece injection molding single-layer structure, without the use of skin material, mainly used for trucks, trucks, and buses. A rigid automobile instrument panel has high requirements on the surface, the surface should be matte and non-reflective, with no irritation to the human eye, the material requires moisture resistance, heat resistance, and good rigidity, not easy to deform, injection molding instrument panel surface is easy to produce flow marks and fusion marks, and easy to produce the color difference, so the surface has to be sprayed and decorated before use.

Materials: Modified PP, PPE, PC, ABS, PVC/ABS, PC/ABS, PC/PBT, SMA, SAN, etc.

As the surface of injection-molded dashboards is prone to flow marks and fusion marks and is prone to scratches during transportation and use, thus affecting the service life of the products. Therefore, instrument panel manufacturers usually choose modified materials to improve the processing and surface properties of the products by increasing the scratch resistance of the materials.

 Addressing Challenges in Automotive Interior Manufacturing with SILIKE Anti-Scratch Masterbatches:

SILIKE Anti-scratch masterbatches were designed for greater scratch & Mar resistance for the Modified thermoplastics industry, to meet high scratch requirements like PV3952, and GM14688 for the automotive industry. We hope to meet more and more demanding requirements via product upgrading.

SILIKE Silicone masterbatch LYSI-306C serves as both an anti-scratch surface agent and a processing aid. This offers controlled and consistent products as well as a tailor-made morphology. It can be used in classical melt blending processes like Single /Twin screw extruders, and injection molding. A physical blend with virgin polymer pellets is recommended.

SILIKE Anti-Scratch Silicone masterbatch LYSI-306C has an enhanced compatibility with the Polypropylene  (CO-PP ) matrix — Resulting in lower phase segregation of the final surface, this means it stays on the surface of the final plastics without any migration or exudation, Improves the anti-scratch properties of TPE, TPV PP, PP/PPO Talc filled systems, reducing fogging, VOCS or Odors. SILIKE Anti-Scratch Silicone masterbatch LYSI-306C helps improve long-lasting anti-scratch properties of automotive interiors, by offering improvements in many aspects like Quality, Aging, Hand feel, Reduced dust buildup… etc. Suitable for a variety of Automotive interior surfaces, such as Door panels, Dashboards, Center Consoles, and instrument panels.

2) Vacuum molding instrument panel

Vacuum molding instrument panel is a technology commonly used in the production of cars at home and abroad, which has the advantages of a good cushioning effect of the instrument panel, high security, strong aesthetics, and so on.

Material: ABS/PP, PU, etc.

3) Semi-rigid Foam Dashboard

Semi-rigid foam soft instrument panel structure is divided into three layers, respectively, for the skeleton (substrate), buffer layer, and composite skin. The skin is mainly vacuum vacuum molding skin, plastic-lined molding skin, and spray molding skin three, plastic-lined molding and spray molding in recent years because of its pattern uniformity, no internal stress, design tolerance, and other characteristics of the widely used, highly recognized by customers, will become the leading mid-range and high-end cars.

Material:

Skeleton: PC/ABS, PP, SMA, PPO (PPE) and other modified materials;

Foam cushion layer: PU foam

Composite skin: PVC, TPO, TPU, etc.

Conclusion： The dashboard plays a crucial role in automobiles， improving the surface quality of the dashboard has always been the pursuit of the industry, and choosing good materials has become a problem for major manufacturer， If you want to be a high-quality supplier of raw materials for instrument panels, consider incorporating SILIKE Anti-Scratch Silicone Masterbatch. This solution elevates your market competitiveness by enhancing material processing and surface quality. Explore more about our Anti-Scratch Silicone Masterbatch on our website: www.siliketech.com.

Contact us at Tel: +86-28-83625089 / +86-15108280799 or email amy.wang@silike.cn for further inquiries.