Plastronics Pilot Line

Valeo Lighting develops and manufactures headlights (HL) and rearlamps (RL) for vehicles. Its mission is to offer continuous technological innovations in order to increase safety, ensure better visibility and offer an aesthetic consistent with the new designs and demands of customers. The company has a double commitment, with safety and aesthetics and continuous change, which makes it a company at the avant-garde both for the development of new products and for manufacturing technologies.

The progressive increase of the electronic content in the headlights and the rearlamps of the vehicles originates an increase in the weight of these components in the final cost of the product, still far from being optimized because it is in many cases new non-standardized applications. This situation has created a favorable climate for the launching of development projects aimed at achieving more competitive costs for access to new markets.

Plastronics as an implantation technology for conductive tracks on plastics is an alternative technology to eliminate printed circuit boards, harness and associated connectors. They are all high cost components that require complicated and unreliable assembly processes mainly due to disconnections resulting from bad clipping, deterioration or interference in routing. In addition, the space is increasingly restricted for the headlights and the pilots of the vehicles.

After having made various approaches to the technologies of deposition of conductive tracks on plastic parts, Valeo Lighting has carried out this project with the aim of developing a novel pilot line of Plastronics technology that enables the elimination of rigid or flexible electronic plates and the reduction or elimination of wiring in the manufacture of lighting products.

The technical objectives successfully achieved in the project, coinciding with the work stages carried out, are detailed below:

• Identification of Plastronics implantation opportunities in HL and RL, having as main value the elimination of PCBs, flexboards and wiring.
• Definition of the process stages: technologies, equipment, material, costs, analysis of potential failures.
• Design, construction and commissioning of a pilot line: Integrating the systems and process stages.

The project, completed successfully, has lasted 32 months, and has been carried out in collaboration with ANDALTEC (Plastic Technology Center located in Martos) and the Group of robotics, automatic and computer vision of the University of Jaén.