Unicat

Unicat
Germany

http://www.unicat.net/ They manufacture your individual expedition vehicle or RV with all-wheel drive. All-wheel drive chassis, twist free subframe, body with or without lifting roof, expedition Profen interior, made ​​by specialists in best German car manufacturing quality.  Manufacturing a UNICAT vehicle easily can be compared with building a house or a boat. Apart from the purely technical problems, there are the requirements raised by your personal home preferences and lifestyle. In mobile use, the solutions often must withstand extreme conditions. This calls for professional know-how in a variety of fields: vehicle manufacturing, mechanical engineering, vibration analysis, thermodynamics, hydraulics, pneumatics, electrical engineering, insulation, heating, sanitary engineering, water treatment, interior design, cabinet-making, etc. Expertise in all these areas is the prerequisite for the high quality standard of UNICAT. However, should no satisfactory solutions be available in these areas to date, professionalism also means creating designs of one's own and developing them till ready for use. This often may require creating intricate and expensive special tools and parts. But it's their ambition to provide perfect solutions to details. Examples of such details are the seals of lids, hatches and doors, the fitting of burglar-proof locks, the use of insulating laminated glass windows with no cold spots, selective reinforcement to prevent cracks in the shelter structure, special torsion-free floor units which save additional weight and keep the centre of gravity low. Their view of professionalism, of course, also includes the use of the best materials—including many parts used by shipbuilders and plant constructors. Frequently, the equipment and materials they buy in are further refined by us and, before they get installed, are tested for their operation, reliability and safety, and optimised. Naturally, their more than twenty years of experience in purchasing materials greatly benefit us. They are well aware of all the strengths, weaknesses and peculiarities of the suppliers and can make the optimum choice. By maintaining intense contact with their customers they also know what works in the field. This practical feedback enters into every new development. Before they deliver your finished UNICAT vehicle they put it through extensive tests once again—some of the most rigorous ones they can come up with—under real-life operating conditions. And since their extremely high quality standards have stood the test of time, they can offer you exceptional warranties on all work performed by UNICAT. The chassis is the private traveller's building plot. Just as the size of a plot determines the size of the house that can be built on it, so too does the size and carrying capacity of the chassis determine the size of the shelter. Just as important as the lay of a property is the suitability of your vehicle for cross-country driving. It determines which of the most beautiful locations you can reach with your home on wheels and how comfortably you get there. The choice of an appropriate chassis and the optimal combination of chassis fittings therefore constitute the basis of a well-balanced complete vehicle. UNICAT is independent of specific makes and enjoys best relations with the leading chassis manufacturers—guaranteeing that UNICAT always knows what is possible. They will gladly pass on to you their over 20 years experience with the widest range of chassis. They sum up the advantages and drawbacks of the various chassis and enable you to make a sound decision. Once you have decided on the chassis, you should make sure that the body builder is qualified to work on chassis and is recommended by the chassis manufacturer. Once the suitable chassis has been selected, the job is to appropriately alter and complement it to make it an expedition chassis, the basis of a superior overall vehicle. As qualified vehicle constructors licensed to make changes to chassis, UNICAT, experienced in converting the chassis of various manufacturers and possessing the knowledge which changes best should be made to which chassis, definitely is the appropriate partner for this purpose. To be precise: the perfect partner, because only if chassis modifications and body come from the same source will the synthesis be optimal. The frame assembly is the foundation of your home on wheels. Its function is to connect the body with the chassis, just like the foundation of a house serves to anchor it to the land it stands on. If a house is situated on a slope, a sandy beach, rocky ground, or perhaps even in an earthquake zone, in each case the foundation is different, in each case it adapts to the particular conditions of the substratum. It's the same in vehicle manufacture: the connection between body and chassis must be adapted to the selected chassis, the body size and weight, and the purpose. As to purpose, there are two fundamentally different categories: on-road use and off-road use. For pure over-the-road operation—and thus for 99.9 % of all trucks—the subframe recommended by truck chassis manufacturers is adequate; the body is rigidly bolted to the chassis via the subframe, which introduces the little torsion generated into the body. This is quite sufficient for a normal haulage body with no cut-outs in the side walls and no interior finish. But if the body is a container for transporting gases or liquids, then for this type of body, in which the torsion would cause cracks, the chassis manufacturers specify a more sophisticated subframe that makes limited use of the three-point mounting principle—even for pure over-the-road operation—in order to keep chassis torsion occurring in road operation safely away from the body. For off-road use, a simple subframe is far from adequate; even a subframe with three-point mounting would be a bad compromise. The body specifications of Mercedes-Benz accordingly stipulate the compulsory use of a torsion-free floor unit for the Unimog, whereas subframes are deemed adequate for trucks—with or without all-wheel drive. The fact that the engineers of Mercedes-Benz Unimog have developed a special torsion-free floor unit specifically for their chassis, with its great cross-country capability, shows the need for a sophisticated technical solution and is in the best tradition of that company. The question whether such a floor unit is necessary only for the Unimog, or also for trucks in off-road use, can be reduced to this: do other laws of physics apply to the Unimog? Therefore, from the outset UNICAT has used torsion-free frame assembly for all the vehicles it builds. How does the torsion-free frame assembly of UNICAT function? The chassis should be suitable for cross-country driving and afford good directional stability and road adhesion at high speed. The flexibility designed into it by the manufacturer must not be restricted. Frame distortion ensures that the vehicle retains ground contact with all four wheels even in extremely rugged terrain. Only then can it move safely off-road. The shelter, on the other hand, is designed as a sturdy box and should permit only minimal distortion. Of course, this likewise applies to the permanently installed furnishings and technical equipment. If you've ever loosened ice cubes from their tray, you know what the effect of deforming the tray is: the ice cubes separate from it. What is desired in that case—to make the ice cubes fall out of the tray—should be avoided at all costs where body and furniture are concerned! So, chassis and shelter should be connected in such a way that no torsional forces at all are transmitted from chassis to body. The torsion-free frame assembly of UNICAT, like the frame assembly of the Unimog, therefore always consists of one fixed bearing and 1 or 2 self-aligning bearings. The fixed bearing acts to locate and fix the body in the middle and transmits forces in all directions. The self-aligning bearings in the forward and rear third transmit forces only in certain directions so that the vehicle frame beneath can twist freely. When frame distortion occurs, it is no longer possible to introduce body weight pressure evenly into the now twisted frame. In the UNICAT frame assembly, the forces are thus introduced into defined areas of the frame. The principal forces are introduced exactly where the rear axle is attached to the frame so that the load on the frame is even reduced. The intended freedom of movement between frame and body also must be taken into account, of course, when pipes and cables are laid and the tanks and other frame add-ons are fitted. All in all, this is a problem of considerable complexity that only can be optimally solved if body and frame assembly originate under the same roof—as at UNICAT. UNICAT bodies—distinguished by the sum of their details. The very first UNICAT bodies were completely manufactured from sandwich panels featuring surface layers of fibreglass-reinforced polyester (GF-UP). In those days even the floor plate got a GF-UP top layer, inside and out. The panels were connected by externally and internally bonded angle sections made of the same material so that corrosion problems and thermal stresses were ruled out by the design. Even the oldest bodies are still in operation today, and many of them have seen the entire world. The obvious advantages of sandwich panels in the meantime have made this material the accepted standard, but connecting the panels to make a sturdy body free of cold spots calls for more. UNICAT floor plates are reinforced with a tubular steel frame which permits a strong and durable connection with the floor assembly. Sandwich panels are assembled at UNICAT without using wooden interfaces, which would make themselves noticeable as cold spots in practical operation. Of course, this gives rise to much greater effort for assembly, but it pays off in daily use. UNICAT doors and windows have reinforced corners, special hinges with theft-proof fittings, double seals, insulating toughened glass and multiple locking mechanisms. Today, UNICAT not only produces simple bodies in standard and customer-specific designs; for many years the product range also has included side drawers, swing-outs, flip-outs, folding roofs and lifting roofs.