Our product is made of the highest grade raw materials sourced from all around Europe. The basic sunshade frame is generated from galvanized wire meaning that when the shades are taken out and stored, there's no chance of rusting (hover). The sunshade fabric itself seems very simple in appearance but it has taken over three years to perfect the fabric before offering our product out into the public domain (hover). Various treatments and application are made to the fabric when it is being constructed to ensure that it complies with all UV and FR requirements imposed by the automotive industry. Using technical fabric experts from all around Europe we have come up with a fabric which we know now passes through all relevant automotive testing in some of the harshest tests carried out by our OEM customers. The fixing clips have all been designed by OE Sunshades and the fixing concept is patent protected ensuring that our sunshades remain unique around the world (hover). Each of our parts are supplied with a photographic fitting instruction to aid installation. Every set of sunshades comes in its very own zip up storage bag (hover). If at anytime you want to remove your sunshades, you can simply zip them away and hang them up in the garage. Sunshades come in sets of 4,5,6 or on rare occasions 8 pieces (hover). You will always have two pieces for the left-hand side and right-hand side rear passenger windows. Where applicable you will then have two pieces for the left-hand and right-hand porthole windows. These are the windows in the load area of your vehicle. You will then generally have two pieces which fit tightly together to give 100% window coverage to the tailgate. On certain applications this is done with one piece. Development Since moving to our new premises in September 2005, we now have our very own in-house development unit. On a daily basis we are developing sunshades for new model applications. The process requires a certain amount of 'reverse engineering'. Whilst for certain accessories it is possible to create parts from technical data and drawings, for our product there is no better way of making it than to create it working with a car on site (hover). Each day a new car is brought into our development unit and by the end of the working day we have new sunshades along with fitting instructions ready to be offered to our customers. The double axis CNC wire bending machines bend and form the basic sunshade. The data can be easily transferred between our two wire bending machines meaning that we always have one machine running out mass quantities for production whilst the other continues with the development programme (hover). Our team of engineers also give great care and attention to the quality control and as part of the development process they also create QC templates so that each wire can be checked for conformity when mass quantities are being produced (hover). Production Getting the correct technique for applying the sunshade fabric to the wire frame is what has taken the most time since the sunshade concept first came about. Numerous methods have been trialled but it was in the summer of 2005 when the answer finally came along. Working alongside a local engineering firm, OE Sunshades were able to give their input into how a machine should be made that could tension the fabric and remain under tension whilst the frames were stuck to it and then cut out. The answer cam in the form of a £30,000 bespoke tensioning table which now plays the key role in our production process. A series of rollers and clamps operated on switch systems can control the tension of our fabric ensuring consistency in our product (hover). The wire frames have a high grade double sided adhesive tape applied to them using tape machines which were once again designed and produced by OE Sunshades in collaboration with our local engineering firm (hover). The shades are then hung ready for use on the tension table (hover). The table operators then lay the frames onto the pre-tensioned fabric in the most economical way to ensure that the fabric usage is maximised. The frames are then cut out and ready for the final operations of production (hover). The woven edge binding is then sewn around the edge of the frame using specially adapted sewing machines (hover). The final task is to attach the customer label. This label plays a three fold function. It's first job is to give the product it's identity. The second function is to cover the join in the woven binding and thirdly it acts as an aid for when installing and removing the sunshades from your vehicle (hover).