McLaren pioneered the use of carbon-fiber composites in Formula One race car construction, creating sleekly shaped parts strengthened with "honeycomb" interiors. With the help of innovative products and technologies from Henkel, official supplier to Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, the team's design engineers, meanwhile, have become experts in manufacturing specialty parts – from the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes MP4-22's aerodynamically shaped nose cone to its tail wing.
"Speed, agility and reliability are important not only on the track but across all aspects of Formula One racing," said Martin Whitmarsh, CEO, Formula One, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes. "When it comes to constructing the car, we also need to team up with partners that we can depend on and that share our passion for being the best. In constant pursuit of winning, our engineers are teaming with Henkel to construct the MP4-22."
Throughout a 13-year association with the team, the number of different applications of Henkel products on the car has grown from around 50 to more than 300 today. Henkel's innovative manufacturing solutions are playing an ever-stronger role in molding the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes MP4-22's carbon-fiber body parts. To make a component such as the car's nose cone, the very first step is to make the pattern from which a mold can be made. The pattern must have a low surface energy so that it will easily release from the mold. For this, patterns are coated with a minimum of four coats of Frewax, a Henkel product combining the unique material in Hysol Frekote and wax.
To finish the molds, each is treated with Frekote 55NC, a semi-permanent release agent that chemically bonds to the mold surface to form a micro-thin film that remains stable at temperatures exceeding most molding processes. Used on all molded components on the MP4-22, Frekote 55-NC dries within one minute and enables Vodafone McLaren Mercedes to get more productivity out of each mold.
As all molded parts are created from the outside-in, the first material fitted in the readied mold must provide for a high-quality paintable surface and must serve to improve the surface quality of honeycomb-stiffened parts. For the MP4-22's molded parts, the product of choice is Synskin, an epoxy-based finishing product from Henkel.
"Henkel's involvement in Formula One racing goes far beyond the presence of our logo on the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes MP4-22," said Alois Linder, executive vice president for adhesives technologies, Henkel. "Our partnership with the team offers an optimal proving ground to expand the innovative uses of Henkel products and technologies deployed in thousands of industrial applications and consumer goods that touch people's lives, whether they know it or not, every day."