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Innovative lightweight construction is unit-countable, affordable, and hybrid. The automotive supplier BOGE Rubber & Plastics has developed an additive manufacturing process for continuous fibers that is used to mass-produce the brake pedal – half the weight of steel, fully automated, and quality-assured. The core of the additive manufacturing process is a layering of unidirectional continuous fiber strips (tapes) that locally reinforces the fiber architecture of organic sheet metal. In a downstream process, this tailored blank is formed, the tape reinforcement is seamlessly bonded, and hybridized with an injection molding compound. The material properties of thermoplastic continuous fiber shells thus become programmable. Increased fiber efficiency reduces the continuous fiber content by around 30%. This reduces the wall thickness of the product and thus also cycle time and weight.

Lightweight construction: With the additive manufacturing process for continuous fibers, the brake pedal is half the weight of steel – fully automated and quality assured.

Invented by Olaf Beutler (BOGE Rubber & Plastics Group).

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