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Brighton Science Blog
Topic: Automotive

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6 minute read

Adhesive Bonding vs. Mechanical Fastening in Product Design: The Pros and Cons

When creating their next innovative product, designers, and manufacturers strive to achieve optimal performance while minimizing assembly and materials costs. In this pursuit, they often focus on optimizing material usage. In the quest to achieve optimization, it is uncommon for excess materials to...

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3 minute read

The Best Way to Qualify a Wash Method for Your Manufacturing Process

Parts washers  are heavy-duty, hardworking machines that have become irreplaceable staples in automotive andmachined part manufacturing processes. As manufacturing processes have become more sophisticated, the industries using parts washers have expanded to includenot only industrial metals and...

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3 minute read

Why Automotive Glass Bonding Recalls Should be a Thing of the Past

Automotive glass is a technological marvel. Despite its clarity, there is a lot that is unseen by the average driver. Silica compounds, tempering, and lamination all combine to create one of the most critical components of today’s motor vehicles. Unfortunately, though, things periodically go wrong...

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3 minute read

Top Challenges Product Development Teams Experience When Bringing a Product Concept to Manufacturing

Modern product development is fraught with challenges due in large part to the sophistication and complexity of the various elements that go into a final product – everything from materials and surface geometries to coatings, bonding, and even staff skills and competencies. Pitfalls await even the...

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7 minute read

How to Avoid Polymeric Coating Failure Which Leads to Corrosion in Materials

These days, if you see a painted product, it is likely a polymer-based coating providing a striking and powerful barrier between the underlying material and elements in the atmosphere that want to corrode that material. Polymer coating technology has advanced tremendously in the last decade....

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7 minute read

Effective Strategies for Efficient and Reliable Manufacturing That Can’t Wait

Today, manufacturing requires a paradigm shift from reactionary whack-a-mole problem correction to taking a holistic approach. The mutually reliant elements of manufacturing are interwoven in both obvious and invisible ways. From supply chain communication to equipment dependability and from ...

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6 minute read

The Huge Need for Zero Defect, Large Scale Molding Processes

Manufacturing large-scale molded products such as pools, boats, and aircraft parts is as herculean a process as the products they generate. Colossal molds are used to form fiberglass and other composites into aircraft wing panels, fuselages, boat hulls, bus shells, and pools.

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4 minute read

How to Get a Stronger Weld Through Cleaning

Even though we look around us and see plastic everywhere, in every shape and imaginable application, metals are still a more commonly used raw material in machined products. Metals are the legacy material of choice due to their strength and relative ease of bonding but advances in polymers are...

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6 minute read

3 Things You Need to Know to Create Strong, Reliable Bonds With Laser Cleaning

Manufacturers are always looking to create stronger, more durable, more reliable, and in the automotive and aerospace sectors, lightweight products. In this pursuit, they’ve often upgraded and swapped out material systems for metal alloys that have a lower density, better temperature tolerance, and...

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7 minute read

Coatings on Car Sensors and Why We Don’t Have Driverless Cars Yet

Our relationship with our vehicles may have changed in the past few months, with the idea of commuting to work looking more like a shuffle to the desk across the room rather than a drive to the office across town. However, cars have not dropped from their prominence in our society.

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8 minute read

Demystifying the Greatest Metal Brazing Process Challenges

When thinking about what manufacturing looks like, most people envision sparks flying, metal clanking, and fires blazing. This isn’t too far off the mark since metals have been used for bonding joints together to build larger, sturdier, and more stable structures since before the first Industrial...

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6 minute read

Formed In Place Gasket (FIPG) Reliability Starts with the Surface

Form-in-place-gaskets (FIPG) have been a revolutionary advancement in industries that bank on high-reliability sealing applications. FIPG is a versatile sealing technique that deploys a mostly silicone (they can sometimes be blended with metals like silver, aluminum, and nickel for conductivity...

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5 minute read

Importance of Adhesion & Composites in Lightweighting Cars

One of the most pressing questions on the minds of manufacturing engineers is how to take a load off. Lightweighting, or shedding pounds on assembled vehicles and machinery, is a critical puzzle in aerospace, marine, and, most acutely, automotive industries. In fact, with the pressure to optimize...

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2 minute read

Don’t Forget the Surface of Microelectronics

It’s easy to be dazzled by the advancements in electronic and medical devices that are constantly being made and discovered, allowing manufacturers to work on increasingly micro levels. Smaller tech means greater efficiency and higher production rates, which can lead to lower prices and more...

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1 minute read

Guaranteeing Anti-fog Coating Application on Automotive Headlights

The competitive nature of the automotive industry requires manufacturers to engineer the ideal product; failures, no matter how small, are unacceptable and can bring heavy consequences.

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1 minute read

Optimizing your Metal Performance with the Surface Analyst

Manufacturers who work with metal and are concerned with metal performance are all too familiar with the obstacles that come along with coating, painting, bonding, printing, or sealing it. While the uses of metal in manufacturing are countless and exist in numerous industries, the common...

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2 minute read

Automotive Series: Surface Preparation of Composite Surfaces

Building a More Fuel-Efficient Automobile The pursuit of producing a more fuel-efficient automobile does not rely solely on the efficiency of the engine. A great amount of fuel efficiency gains are possible not because of improvements to engine design but because of improvements in materials....

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1 minute read

Contact Angle Analysis: Sealing Surface of Aluminum Castings

Surface Quality Requirements of Aluminum Castings Automotive manufacturers widely utilize aluminum castings as the most successful way to create aluminum parts. However, this process can involve inorganic contaminants on the surface, which interfere with potential bonding, sealing, or coating....

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3 minute read

Automotive Applications Series: Polymer Painting and Bonding in Automotive Manufacturing

Polymers are some of the most common base materials used in automotive parts. Polypropelenes, Polyolefins, and ABS plastics are used in dashboards, door panels, bumper fascias, liftgates, sensors, and increasingly exterior doors and fenders. A polymer is a low surface energy material that typically...

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2 minute read

Automotive Applications Series: Evaluating Surface Preparation for the Automotive Industry

Automotive manufacturers who bond, seal, coat, paint, or print now have a reliable way to verify the cleanliness of their surfaces.

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3 minute read

Automotive Applications Series: Ensuring Success for Formed-In-Place Gasket (FIPG) Applications

Controlling Surface Condition in FIPG Application Increasingly, FIPG processes are replacing traditional gaskets for a variety of automotive applications, such as air filters, oil filters, door panels, and external engine parts. The advantages include cheaper material cost, higher throughput...

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