BMW’s New Factory Robots Can Paint Complex Designs on Cars Without Any Time-Consuming Masking

As the automotive meeting line improved and modernized over the previous century, it opened up new potentialities for brand spanking new automobiles to be personalized by drivers. BMW is taking the subsequent step with customization with a newly developed robot that may shortly paint vehicles with complex designs like an enormous inkjet printer.

If, whereas skipping via the channels, you’ve ever landed on one of many many actuality reveals that contain upgrading and customizing automobiles or different automobiles, then you definitely’ve in all probability seen the intensive work that goes into making a customized paint job. It’s a time-consuming course of that entails making use of completely different paint colours layer-by-layer, with intensive masking in-between to make sure that colours painted onto one space of a automobile don’t find yourself on one other. It’s laborious and costly, and it’s why manufacturing unit robots usually solely paint automobiles in a single shade.

Luxury automobile makers attempt to offer their prospects with as many customization choices as attainable, nevertheless, so BMW labored with one other German firm, Duerr, to create a brand new manufacturing unit robotic that may paint two-tone finishes, or create elaborate designs on a automobile, with none in-between masking required. The robotic’s referred to as the EcoPaintJet Pro and as a substitute of a conventional paint sprayer on the enterprise finish, it makes use of a contraption that’s not not like the print head in your inkjet printer. Jets of ink, as small as half a millimeter in thickness, are sprayed via an orifice plate which creates outlined edges because it hits the automobile. When mixed with the precision actions of the EcoPaintJet Pro’s robotic arm, intricate designs may be created with transitions between colours that look as crisp as if masking strategies, similar to tape or stencils, had been used.

At the BMW Dingolfing plant in Munich, the brand new robotic and paint method is being piloted on 19 new BMW M4 Coupés that roll out of the manufacturing unit with a particular two-tone end that includes M4 branding on the hood and tailgate that will likely be utilized by the corporate. Eventually, BMW needs to broaden the usage of the EcoPaintJet Pro bot so its prospects have extra reasonably priced choices relating to customizing the looks of their new automobiles, however there are different benefits to the brand new expertise.

The precision of the utilized paint means there’s no overspray—extra paint that finally ends up inside a portray room that must be cleared away and disposed of, leading to wasted supplies and the usage of harsh chemical substances. BMW additionally believes the EcoPaintJet Pro will lead to decrease power consumption as it’s going to change how the sealed and extremely ventilated portray rooms in its factories function. “Since paint separation is no longer required, the amount of air needed is also lower. At around 7,000 operating hours, this results in energy savings of more than 6,000 megawatt-hours and reduces the carbon footprint by nearly 2,000 tonnes per year.”