Marelli

Calsonic Kansei Corporation (President & CEO: Hiroshi Moriya; Headquarters: Kita-ku,Saitama-city) announces it has developed a new leather-wrapping technique for its car instrument panels, which are increasingly used in European luxury cars, and has commenced mass production using this new technology.

Traditionally, instrument panels have been produced by laying press-molded skin against an injection-molded core material, and then inserting a foaming agent (urethane) between them.In this new mass-production technology, the leather-wrapped instrument panels use leather which has been cut and sewn into a three-dimension shape, which is then affixed and wrapped around a resin core to give a finished product exhibiting excellent craftsmanship (see figure below). This technology combines adhesion and clamping technology and technology allowing high-precision control over the stitching positions, thereby allowing mass production by utilizing the characteristics of the leather to fit it around the complex shape of instrument panels. As the global market for leather-wrapped instrument panels grows,Calsonic Kansei intends to market this to more customers around the globe.

(Overview of the newly developed leather-wrapped instrument panel)