A truck body manufacturer in Stuttgart shut down their assembly line for three days last February. The cause? A shipment of PET foam core panels with thickness variance exceeding ±0.8mm — more than double the acceptable tolerance. Parts wouldn’t seat properly in the jigs. Every panel in that batch went to scrap. Choosing a core…
An RV manufacturer in Indiana traced a 40% warranty spike back to one bad batch of xps foam core panels. The compressive strength varied by 15% across the run. Panels warped inside the walls. Doors stopped sealing. Climate systems ran non-stop trying to compensate for thermal leaks. That supplier inconsistency cost $280,000 in field repairs…
A truck body manufacturer in southern Germany lost €220,000 on a single bad density call last year. They specified 60 kg/m³ pvc foam core for refrigerated van panels chasing a 12% weight reduction over their previous build. Six months into service, those panels started delaminating. The low-density foam had soaked 35% more resin during layup…
A truck body OEM we supplied last year scrapped 340 sandwich panels in a single production run. Their procurement team had switched from pmi foam core to PET to save €28 per square meter on raw material. The PET deformed at 165°C during prepreg co-curing — 15°C below their autoclave set point. That material substitution…
Last month, a major truck body builder rejected three full containers of panels at their dock. The material had a thickness variance of just 1.2 millimeters. It sounds small, but it crashed their automated routing machines and brought the assembly line to a dead halt for four days. When you specify composite core materials for…