Painting a REAL automobile

If you've ever paint a 1 to 1 car or airplane (which has more issues than a car), you will quickly discover that the same problems exist as on models, just on a bigger scale.  And the painting is almost anticlimatic - 48 to 60 man hours to prep, sand (strip on a/c) and mask, then 2 to 4 hours to paint (single color - multiple colors just drive the time up).  Then another 12 to 24 man hrs of work touching up, removing the masking w/o damage, touch up again, reinstall any and all parts that that you removed either to paint seperatly or it was easier to remove than mask, final check and touch ups and you're done.  And that's just if you don't have the problems of orange peel, pin holes or runs - gotta love it.

echolmberg wrote:

Why is it that you never see the dreaded orange peel effect, fish eyes, pebbly surfaces, or trapped lint on a new car's paint job from the factory?

 

Trust me, they are there. You are just not looking hard enough. I remember looking at a BMW Z8 when they first came out and being disgusted by how much orange peel the paint had. While modern techniques do a great job for mass produced cars and the general public they just dont cut it for a car nut. I am always on the lookout for perfect *showcar* quality paint...

They do it just like you see on shows like "Pimp my Ride", except on a much larger scale.

Here's an excerpt from the article;

"The benefits ripple out. Not only does Georgetown use less paint, it also buys less cleaning solvent and has dramatically reduced disposal costs for both. Together with new programming to make the robots paint more quickly, Buckner's group has increased the efficiency of its car-wash-sized paint booths from 33 cars an hour to 50.

"We're getting the same volume with two booths that we used to get with three," Buckner says. "So we shut down one of the booths." If you want to trim your energy bill, try unplugging an oven big enough to bake 25 cars. Workers dismantled Top Coat Booth C, leaving the open floor space available for some future task"

They have large, sealed spray booths where the cars are brought in, the room is sealed, vented out to remove any dust particles and then painted.  Then, they're moved to the drying room, which is nothing more than a really big oven.

The only way we could replicate that would be to build a spray booth large enough to work in and then seal yourself in.  Once you've vented out the air, you can stary spraying without concern about dust in the paint (that is, if you haven't passed out from a lack of air, lol).

-Fred

 

They've perfected their system. Most new cars are painted on an assembly line, and use an electronic charge to attract the paint particles. Here's an interesting article on how Toyota does it at the Georgetown, KY plant.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/111/open_no-satisfaction.html

Sadly it's lacking in details about the paint process, but suffice to say that 8 hours in painting by robots might be a tad expensive for the typical modeler to reproduce!