Automotive is estimated to be the largest end-use industry in plastic injection molding market between 2020 and 2025. Plastic injection molding is predominantly used to manufacture components such as interior, assembly and exterior parts.

Today, an average car is composed of around 30’000 parts, a third of which are made of various polymers. Tax regulations, fuel consumptions, and CO₂ emissions are driver for automotive manufacturers to use lightweight plastics instead of other materials such as metals. We see an even stronger shift to plastics with the advent of electromobility.

In this context of growing demand for plastic components, the importance of minimizing the rate of faulty parts along with an easy identification become obvious. Innovations to minimize such rate and help manage recall campaign to small numbers are therefore welcome. Critical, safety-relevant parts in automotive need to be treacable by regulations.

matriq’s marking solution is able to target these aspects. Thanks to the unique code issued on each single part enabling individual traceability, the quality can be followed on single part level facilitating the search of faulty parts narrowed down to smaller numbers. Moreover, into each DM-insert, we incorporate a self-testing algorithm that measures all pixel’s performance after each individual cycle and assesses the status and its degradation over time in order to feature a predictive maintenance message.