When only one color is painted, modern automotive paint shops are unbeatably efficient. Over 300,000 car bodies are coated each year in consistently high quality. But if a decorative and contrasting color is added, for example on roofs or as a design stripe, the effort required increases significantly: after the complete body has been painted in the base color, dried and cooled, it has to be masked by hand with adhesive film. Then it goes back to the painting line, where the second color is applied. After drying and cooling again, the film has to be removed manually. This not only involves high labor costs, but also increases the energy required for baking the paint by at least 25 percent compared with single-color painting. In addition, six to 15 square meters of adhesive film have to be disposed of per car body. And valuable time is lost because the second color application occupies the paint line.
Dr. Jochen Weyrauch, CEO of Dürr Systems AG: "The EcoPaintJet is a quantum leap on the way to efficient two-color painting of cars. For the first time, it enables the functional combination of customized product design and automated production."
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