Digital material twins for more efficient product development

At Covestro, we understand the importance of staying ahead in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape. For years, we have been a leader in providing physical samples, but today our customers are increasingly relying on digital tools for product design. We recognize the need to provide an equivalent digital alternative. That's why we're excited to introduce Imagio®, our cutting-edge digital sampling solution designed to revolutionize the way we interact with you.

Polycarbonate and its blends are incredibly versatile materials, offering a wide range of potential appearances. However, our product comes in pellet form, which is far away from the final product or your vision. Traditionally, tooling and injection molding processes have been required to give these materials their desired shape and appearance. Imagio® aims to overcome these limitations by offering the digital material base for photorealistic virtual prototyping and computer-aided simulation processes. By providing appropriate data, Imagio® empowers you  to visualize and explore the full potential of our materials without the need for physical prototypes.

AxF files for photorealistic materials in your rendering software

The backbone of the digital solution is the Total Appearance Capture (TAC™) technology from X-Rite / PANTONE®, which captures optical properties such as color, gloss, transparency, translucency or surface texture of a specific material sample using an optical appearance measurement device. The data is stored in a special data format called AxF which can be used in popular rendering software tools like Autodesk® VRED®, Dassault Systèmes® DeltaGen®, Luxion® Keyshot®, NVIDIA® Iray® or Chaos® V-Ray®. Contact our Covestro material experts which can provide you with the appropriate data for your visualization tool.

Supporting optical engineering with data for optical design software

The simulation and development of optical illumination systems is an area with very specific requirements. The Imagio® CQ family has now been extended by a module called Imagio® Optical Material Data which can be accessed after registration. The target group are experts in the field of development and simulation of optical components, i.e. automotive headlights and interior lighting as well as general lighting. On the one hand it is possible to specifically search for optical material properties in our polycarbonate portfolio, on the other hand Covestro provides the necessary data for optical simulation programs like Ansys® Speos, Synopsys® LightTools® or customers' in-house optical simulation solutions.

Dematerialization of the sampling process thanks to digital sampling

At first glance, Covestro material sample chips may not appear to be a significant sustainability issue. However, what looks like a small piece plastic can require up to 25 kilos of material and a fair amount of energy during the manufacturing process. Most of the produced material ends up as waste, as we have to clean the production equipment  after every run to make sure that it doesn’t contaminate the next round of samples. 

To make things worse, the chips are often sent by express over large distances to get them into the hands of designers for evaluation. With Imagio® CQ, we are introducing a completely new way to experience our materials and minimize the need for multiple rounds of sampling. Get access to our virtual material drawers at any time from any place in the world and share your material ideas with colleagues around the globe. It is possible now with the digital samples from our Imagio® CQ library.