Fareham & Manchester based injection moulding company The Protool Plastics Group wins new polymer heatsink business from major UK based lighting OEM.

Following the announcement by The Protool Plastics Group and Lati in October 2018 of a full analysis service for thermal management via polymers there has been a significant increase in the level of enquiries from the commercial lighting sector.

This is driven by the need to reduce costs, reduce product weight and increase component complexity in an ever more cost driven market.

The Protool Plastics Group and Lati are proud to announce another major contract success with the winning of three polymer heatsinks for a major UK based lighting OEM.

Group Managing Director Michael Hadfield, stated “Our Fareham site has manufactured polymer heatsinks for several years and as such has significant experience in the process parameters required to accurately injection mould a polymer that behaves differently to almost all others. This latest new business justifies our belief in the technology and gives further return on significant R&D costs over the past 5 years.”

“Back in 2014 it was difficult to sell this technology as designers could not compute that a material that is usually thermally insulating could be thermally conductive to the required levels. Times change and the drive to reduce costs and product weights has given us a bigger window of opportunity to demonstrate its full potential.”

On the latest product the customer has seen the following advantages:-

• 40% component cost reduction compared to aluminium die casting.
• 42% component weight saving.
• Comparable performance to aluminium based on 35C ambient temperature thermal tests.
• 55% reduction in initial mould cost (not including replacement dies required for aluminium die cast tooling).
• Tool life of 500,000 shots compared to 80,000 shots.
• No post mould machining or painting required.

He further commented “Advances in material technology and heatsink design has vastly increased the potential of the polymer with successful applications on commercial lighting up to 5,000 Lumens and over 35 watts of output power. This technology has finally come of age and alongside the technical back-up from Lati’s team in Italy we expect to see many more success in the next 12 months.”

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