Honeycomb panel press expands to 4 metre panels

The heated press now takes 1.5 × 4 m panels, covering full-height lift car walls without a joint.

The honeycomb bonding press has been extended to accept panels of 1.5 by 4 metres, up from 1.5 by 2.5.

The driver was lift cars. A full-height car wall is typically 2.6 to 3.2 metres, and producing it as two bonded panels meant a visible joint and a stiffener behind it. Customers had been asking for a single panel for two years.

Flatness across the longer platen holds within 0.5 mm per metre after cure, measured on every tenth panel. That figure was the open question during commissioning; a longer press does not automatically hold the same flatness, and the heating zones had to be rebalanced twice.