Mazda Motor Corp employed exterior stylish parts made of unpainted plastic for the “Roadster RF” compact convertible to be released in Japan Dec 22, 2016.<\/p>\n
The car was exhibited at EcoPro 2016, a trade show on green technologies, which took place from Dec 8 to 10, 2016, at Tokyo Big Sight.<\/p>\n
Mazda used unpainted plastic for interior stylish parts of the new “Roadster” released in 2015. This time, the company applied unpainted plastic not only to interior stylish parts but also to exterior parts.<\/p>\n
The Roadster RF’s exterior stylish parts using the unpainted plastic are a “quarter garnish” and “side garnish,” which are conventionally made by painting ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) resin.<\/p>\n
By replating the ABS resin with the unpainted plastic, Mazda achieved a texture quality higher than that of painted ABS resin (rich color and mirror-like smoothness). The weather resistance and scratch resistance of the unpainted plastic-based exterior parts are equivalent to those of exterior parts using painted ABS resin.<\/p>\n
“Though the material cost is higher than that of ABS resin, it eliminates the painting process,” Mazda said. “As a result, it realizes a manufacturing cost lower than that of conventional painted parts.”<\/p>\n
Mazda developed the unpainted plastic, “Bio Engineering Plastic,” in cooperation with Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. It is a bio polycarbonate (PC) made by using the plant-derived “isosorbide.”<\/p>\n
While conventional oil-based PCs are excellent in transparency and impact resistance, their weather resistance is low, and their surfaces are easily scratched. On the other hand, the unpainted plastic co-developed by Mazda and Mitsubishi Chemical has a transparency equivalent to that of conventional PCs. Also, it features a high weather resistance and a high scratch resistance because its molecule has a strong frame structure.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the unpainted plastic is highly chromogenic, and it is possible to produce a surface with a metallic luster by injection molding after mixing pigment. Because it does not require a coating process after shape forming, it eliminates the emission of VOC (volatile organic compound) from paint.<\/p>\n
In addition to the interior stylish parts of the Roadster, Mazda uses the unpainted plastic for the interior and exterior stylish parts of the “CX-9” SUV (sport utility vehicle) for the North American market and the interior stylish parts of the “Axela” sedan and the “Demio” compact car. And the company plans to employ the plastic for cars to be released in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mazda Motor Corp employed exterior stylish parts made of unpainted plastic for the “Roadster RF” compact convertible to be released in Japan Dec 22, 2016. The car was exhibited at EcoPro 2016, a trade show on green technologies, which took place from Dec 8 to 10, 2016, at Tokyo Big Sight. Mazda used unpainted plastic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5847],"supplier":[166,1009],"class_list":["post-39810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-bioplastics","supplier-mazda-motor-corporation","supplier-mitsubishi-chemical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39810"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=39810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}