Dan Martin, President of Summit, commented: “Since my wife, Michelle, and I founded Summit 25 years ago, we’ve been committed to providing outstanding quality and customer service to build the business into a leader in the design, engineering, and construction of molds and molded components. We’ve now reached an inflection point in our growth trajectory, and we believe Fathom is the perfect fit in terms of both culture and customer-value proposition to help take Summit to the next level.”

“Summit’s leading customer base includes some of the largest and most recognizable players in the medical and packaging spaces,” said Matthew Puglisi, Partner of Core. “This acquisition significantly enhances Fathom’s domestic injection molding and tooling capabilities, and we’ll continue to actively pursue acquisitions, similar to Summit, that simultaneously broaden our customer base, enhance our service offering, and deepen our presence in attractive, recession-resistant end markets.”

In-house metalworking capabilities include engineering design, sheet metal shearing, punching and bending, roll forming, hardware integration, welding, grinding, polishing, painting, and assembly. Summit’s thermoplastics engineering expertise allows the company to process multi-shot and bi-injected tooling and perform insert overmolding. Pad printing, hot stamping, ultrasonic welding, and assembly are also offered by the company, which operates a 26,000-square-foot facility northwest of Chicago in McHenry, IL.

Tepex dynalite is developed and produced by the Lanxess subsidiary Bond-Laminates GmbH based in Brilon, Germany. In addition to underbody protection, it is also shaped and back-injected to make seat backs, module supports, battery consoles, front-end components, brake pedals and bumper crossbars. Due to the growing potential uses for Tepex in lightweight automotive engineering, Lanxess has set up a dedicated project group that supports partners worldwide through all stages of Tepex component development, right up to production launch.

The new underbody protection is manufactured in molds as used, for example, for GMT and its related materials. The difference is that a Tepex dynalite 104-RG601 insert with a wall thickness of one millimeter is used. This consists of a glass fiber fabric, containing 47 percent continuous glass fiber rovings by volume, and a PP matrix. It is heated up while the required volume of DLFT compound (containing glass fibers 5 to 50 mm long) is extruded. Both materials are then shaped in a compression mold. Components are thus produced that have a Tepex surface on the engine side – the side subjected to tensile load. “Our material solution is more cost-effective than the previous composite variant because DLFT is a direct extrudate that can be produced at particularly low cost and makes up the larger part of the component’s volume,” says Henrik Plaggenborg, head of Technical Marketing Business Development Tepex Automotive.

Core Industrial Partners’ portfolio company Fathom acquired the precision tooling and injection molding supplier serving customers in the packaging and medical markets.

The engine undertray is manufactured by GSI Deutschland GmbH, based in Hörgertshausen, Germany. The component solution with Tepex and DLFT was developed by the Polytec Group (Hörsching, Austria) in collaboration with Lanxess. The underbody protection was previously made of a polypropylene (PP) -based composite design consisting of a glass-mat-reinforced thermoplastic system (GMT) and an additional fabric-reinforced GMT; before that, sheet steel was used.

Founded in 1996, Summit provides plastic injection mold design, precision mold making, and close-tolerance injection molding with a specialty in small to medium prototype injection molds. Summit primarily serves long-tenured customers in the medical and packaging end markets with its fleet of more than 30 machines, said Core's announcement.

Chicago-based private-equity firm Core Industrial Partners announced today the acquisition of Summit Tooling Inc. and Summit Plastics Inc. by its portfolio company Fathom. The precision tooling and injection molding supplier is the fourth add-on acquisition to the Fathom platform since Core made its initial investment in 2018.

Monroe Capital LLC provided financing for the acquisition. Winston & Strawn LLP provided legal representation to Core and Fathom in the transaction.

“Summit’s focus on customers during the design, prototyping, and low-volume production stages of a product’s life cycle perfectly aligns with Fathom’s unique customer-value proposition,” Fathom CEO Ryan Martin said in a prepared statement. “We’re excited to work with the Summit team to explore opportunities to even better serve its customers through Fathom’s comprehensive digital manufacturing platform while also providing Fathom’s existing customer base expanded domestic quick-turn precision tooling and molding capabilities,” added Martin.

Stephen has been with PlasticsToday and its preceding publications Modern Plastics and Injection Molding since 1992, throughout this time based in the Asia Pacific region, including stints in Japan, Australia, and his current location Singapore. His current beat focuses on automotive. Stephen is an avid folding bicycle rider, often taking his bike on overseas business trips, and is a proud dachshund owner.

In regions where road surfaces are poor, vehicle underbodies are subjected to tough conditions, having to withstand the impact of stones thrown up from the surface and, in extreme cases, even direct contact with the ground. A major German car manufacturer is therefore equipping the first vehicles of various model series that are delivered to countries with poor road infrastructure with an engine undertray made of a particularly robust thermoplastic composite construction.

Continuous-fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composite used in combination with direct long fiber thermoplastic compound can reduce the weight of a protective undertray by 60 percent versus steel.

Lanxess is confident that Tepex will become an increasingly popular solution for underbody protection of vehicles. Many car manufacturers currently use steel or aluminum for components of this kind, which presents certain disadvantages, including with regarding to weight. In electric vehicles, comparatively heavy aluminum panels have been a particularly popular solution for protecting the underside of battery systems. “Using Tepex in combination with DLFT produces considerably lighter, more robust components that also provide more effective sound insulation,” Dittmar sums up.

The undertray consists of Tepex dynalite continuous-fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composite from Lanxess combined with a DLFT (direct long fiber thermoplastic) composite. “Thanks to the toughness and tensile strength that Tepex delivers, this composite design is significantly more resistant to impacts and damage than previous material solutions,” explains Tepex application developer Harri Dittmar. The new component also results in significant weight savings. The engine tray in the Tepex-DLFT composite design is over 60 percent lighter than an equivalent component made of steel, and up to 20 percent lighter when the new material is substituted for aluminum.