Dürr Sets New Benchmarks

In the new Ford Motor Company factory at the Sanand location, paint and final assembly systems major, Dürr sets new standards of modern painting line for the Indian market in terms of paint finish quality as well as eco-efficiency.

Established by Dürr, a Gemany based leading machinery and plant engineering manufacturer, the Ford Motors’ Company paint shop at Sanand location has set new benchmarks in terms of energy consumption, paint finish quality and cost per unit. “We are not only achieving lower VOC and CO₂ emissions here, but are also realizing the highest paint finish quality, in terms of our customer’s individual requirements,” says Dr. Hans Schumacher, Head of the Dürr Division Application Technology, outlining the automated paint process in Sanand.

Tailored to the customer

The core components in the new paint shop are, along with pretreatment, cathodic electrocoating and fully automatic paint application, a high-performance pollution control system for reducing VOC emissions, a heat recovery system for oven heating and highly efficient electrical pumps for paint circulation. Dürr process and application equipment was combined with the car maker’s specific standards during planning. For example, the paint line in Sanand was conceptualized by Ford, according to the so-called 3-wet-paint technology. Three paint layers (primer, base coat and clear coat) are applied one after the other in this paint process, then dried together in a subsequent step. This not only saves space because complete drying can be forgone after the primer painting, but is also highly energy efficient.

Efficiency and quality through rotation

Right from the beginning, the paint process by Ford Sanand is about quality and performance: In pretreatment the white body is initially cleaned, phosphated and provided with a first even coating during the subsequent cathodic electrocoating (EC). Dürr applies its proven Ecopaint RoDip M process here. In this process, the car body is dipped into the dip tank and conveyed through the tank, rotating on its transverse axis. The car body is initially cleaned evenly by this rotation. Subsequently, a high-quality corrosion protection treatment is performed in the EC process, in which primer paint is applied. In the RoDip dip tank, immersion and removal sections standing at steep angles shorten the dip tank by several meters, thus conserving space and resources.