The BMW Group Supplier Innovation Award went to Dürr for the second time. The machinery and plant manufacturer received the award for the first time in 2011. The EcoPaintJet Pro process, which won in the "Sustainability" category, enables cars to be efficiently painted in two colors - without overspray and fully automatically. In addition, there is no longer any plastic waste, as the body no longer has to be masked for two-tone painting. The BMW Group is the world's first automaker to use the EcoPaintJet Pro in series production painting at its Leipzig plant.
At the heart of Dürr's robot-based system is a special applicator which does not atomize the paint as conventionally, but applies it precisely in parallel jets. For this purpose, the applicator has a nozzle plate with around 50 barely visible holes with a diameter of approximately 1 tenth of a millimeter. The paint is applied through them from a distance of 30 mm. With the technology used in Leipzig, each hole in the nozzle plate can be opened and closed individually.