Premium air cabins continue to grow in complexity, with intricate angles and organic curves in seats, lavatories and other interior passenger zones. This design ramification is stretching the performance of existing laminate products.
Schneller quickly recognized the growing marketplace need. Airline installers shared feedback about difficulty wrapping existing interiors’ laminates around increasingly complex three-dimensional parts while maintaining the product texture. They needed a product with greater stretching capacity.
The result? AerFilm Flex® Contour, a lighter-weight decorative laminate with superior formability, engineered to cover three-dimensional parts with compound curves. This innovative product gives cabin designers a greater degree of flexibility to create comfortable and inviting aircraft interior environments.
A Flexible Alternative to Thermoplastics for Premium Air Cabins
The complex angles and curves in passenger zones sometimes means established materials cannot form and stretch as needed, occasionally leaving customers with no other options but thermoplastics or other materials, such as paint to meet the application. AerFilm Flex® Contour addresses that need, and because all Schneller products are created in a single manufacturing facility, we can achieve greater color consistency across all our product lines, offering customers one-stop shopping capabilities.
Apply AerFilm Flex® Contour to a Wide Range of Cabin Areas
The excellent formability exhibited by AerFilm Flex® Contour facilitates its use on complex, compound-curve, 3-dimensional parts that are becoming more and more common in the design of monuments or in the cabin itself. Thus, as compared to our own AerFilm LHR®, the product can be applied to a broader range of areas in the interior of the aircraft. These include ceilings, aisle facings, door linings, stowage bins, sidewall panels, partitions, bulkheads, lavatory walls, and even seat shells. This provides the customer the ability to better match different parts than was possible prior to the launch of AerFilm Flex® Contour. It allows those parts that had been painted before to benefit from all the advantages that decorative laminates offer, whether to the installer, the airline or to the passenger.
Experience Easier Installation and a Smooth Finish with AerFilm Flex® Contour Custom Design
Schneller offers AerFilm Flex® Contour products with an integrally-colored base that provides exceptional resistance and panel protection. This helps to minimize the appearance of scratches and damaged areas. Custom color, texture and design availability are established and backed by Schneller’s well-equipped and experienced design and color matching staffs. Furthermore, the superior texture retention exhibited by AerFilm Flex® Contour during heat application and forming means the product is easier to apply to panels and ensures that covered panels maintain their low-gloss, non-plastic look.
Schneller has a reputation for continuous innovation in this niche. Since its founding in 1964, it has been among the global leaders in engineered decorative laminates used in transforming airline interior environments. AerFilm Flex® Contour was featured during the Aircraft Interiors Expo - Hamburg, Germany, and will be featured again at the Aircraft Interior Expo Americas in Los Angeles this September. Please contact your Account Executive to discuss the features and benefits of this innovative product.