Make it light. Win the fight.
We can help you significantly reduce the weight in your platform in ways you would never have thought possible.
3M Lightweighting Solutions
Cutting weight without sacrificing capability or durability is a specialty of ours. We can help your team reduce total vehicle weight while still meeting your project’s performance requirements.
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Assembly, Joining & BondingEnable streamlined production. Help reduce fuel consumption. Help protect against corrosion. Beyond producing a lighter vehicle or aircraft, these are just some of the proven possibilities when you use structural adhesive liquids, tapes and sealants from 3M in conjunction with—or to replace—mechanical fasteners in your next platform design. Whether they’re applied in an automated, semi-automated or manual application, they have helped customers save time, money and most importantly weight.
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Metals, Plastics & CompositesReplacing metals like stainless steel, supper alloys, tungsten carbides and more with ceramics or plastics can yield high strength, lighter weights and even heat shielding properties. From drive shafts, to fuel tanks, to seam sealing and building entire structures, explore our solutions like our advanced composites, structural surfacing films, or our glass bubbles that have helped to shed pounds and enable weight reductions of up to 15% in many forms.
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Other MaterialsOur glass films and coatings, damping materials, acoustic absorbers and friction shims are solutions we leverage to provide functionality to your vehicle platform or to enhance your design for manufacturing. For example, our friction shims can transmit up to 4x higher torques while enabling more compact, lightweight joint designs, while our engineered damping materials have helped reduce vibration and structure-borne noises while making for a more flexible assembly process.
Let’s find a solution.
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Product Solutions
With the right combination of solutions, we can help take your platform design well-beyond simply cutting weight. We can help maintain and enhance other performance attributes to give your next aircraft, vehicle or ship a competitive advantage.
Structural Adhesives
Our liquid and tape solutions for automated, semi-automated or manual application provide more than strength. They can be used in conjunction with mechanical fasteners, or even replace them, helping save significant time, money and process steps in a variety of applications.
Damping Materials
Effectively managing noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) in your designs without adding weight has been our focus for decades. Our lightweight 3M™ Thinsulate™ Insulation and Engineered Damping Materials help with sound insulation and absorption nearly anywhere on a vehicle platform.
Aerospace Sealants
Our aerospace sealant solutions help reduce shrinkage and rework on your aircraft, while their low density reduces final aircraft weight. They have quick cure times and excellent tooling properties to allow for increased throughput in your manufacturing process.
Adhesives and Tapes
3M bonding and attachment solutions have been used to strengthen and streamline vehicle designs for decades, from automotive to aircraft and beyond. We can help solve some of your toughest bonding challenges and help improve your manufacturing process efficiency as well.
Nextel™ Ceramic Fibers and Textiles
Both lightweight and durable, Nextel ceramic fibers and textiles are designed to and have successfully met some of today’s most demanding thermal, mechanical and electrical performance requirements.
Glass Bubbles
Imagine lighter-weight vehicles that can travel farther on less fuel. 3M™ Glass Bubbles have helped to make that a reality when incorporated into a wide range of polymers for density reduction.
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Government Markets Customer Support
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*Authorization to Use: Ensure products meet all applicable specifications, standards, and maintenance manual requirements for the platform being worked on and validate all aircraft approvals against current technical documentation.
