Heavy-Gauge Thermoforming
You may know Penda for our famous truck bedliners. But do you know all the other great things we’re doing with today’s advanced thermoformed plastics?
As the world leader in heavy-gauge thermoforming, Penda offers an unmatched array of thermoforming capabilities to meet an increasingly wide array of customer challenges. By applying lean processes, unique work cells and other smart approaches, we’re doing it all more efficiently and cost-effectively than ever.
Every Penda project is supported by collaborative engineering, refined processes and a wide range of value-added capabilities to provide a comprehensive solution you can count on.
When you work with Penda, we’ll see to it that you get every advantage of thermoformed plastic for your application. So contact us today.
The Penda Thermoforming Difference
13 in-house, rotary sheet-fed, four-station vacuum formers- Mold sizes up to 132 inches long by 84 inches wide—6,000 pounds
- Bottom platens provide 70 inches travel; top platens provide 50 inches travel
- Unique work-cell configuration to minimize WIP and product handling and ensure on-time delivery of quality products
- Patented post-mold cooling stations to eliminate need for cooling fixtures
- Robotic finishing cells to ensure superior dimensional repeatability
Thermoforming, a fabricating process that involves heating a plastic sheet and forming it over a male or female mold, offers a variety of advantages over other materials and processes:
- Lower tooling costs
- Lower prototyping costs
- Lower part weight
- Lower material costs
- Larger parts
- Faster time to market
- Fewer VOCs
- Better surface quality
- Greater flexibility to modify designs
Penda’s design and engineering experts are ready to help you achieve these advantages through a material conversion to thermoformed plastics.
Penda’s wide array of heavy-gauge thermoforming technologies and techniques accommodate an increasingly wide range of customer needs.
A process involving vacuum and pressure forming of two plastic sheets simultaneously by using opposing molds and welding the two halves together while they are still quasi-molten. The result is a hollow finished piece which looks like an enclosure. Advantages include:
- Tight dimensional specs rivaling injection molding
- Intricate detail on outer part surface
- Materials of the two half parts optimized for weight and performance
- Enhanced structural performance
A process involving twin sheet thermoforming around a rigid core such as aluminum honeycomb or foam to form a composite structure. Advantages include:
- A rigid core with the attractive outer appearance of a twin sheet part
- Cores can be designed with hardware attachment points and significant structural integrity
- Polyurethane foam injected into the thermoformed part to provide dimensional integrity and stiffness
A process that creates a composite structure by bonding two color-matched or color-neutral thermoformed skins around a core of honeycomb or foam that is surrounded with fiberglass layers and impregnated with thermoset resin. Advantages include:
- Fiberglass structural performance with class-A surface quality
- Large, strong, aesthetically pleasing parts
- No paint required – less impact on the environment
- Easy repair of scratches
- Excellent surface appearance
- Lower total cost, especially for medium volume, due to reduced fixed cost
A process in which thermoplastic sheet is laminated with a thin paint film in a clean room, thermoformed, trimmed and assembled. Advantages include:
- All body colors can be matched
- Finished parts meet all OEM specs for class A, color and gloss
- Color is achieved with dry pigments – VOC emissions significantly reduced
- Parts are resistant to stone wear
