Assessment of Operational Feasibility Anticipated Quality and Cost Performance of a New Exterior Coating System in Automotive Manufacturing

A new radiation curable exterior coating system for automotive applications, called the UV-system, shows considerable promise in terms of improvement of quality, simplification of assembly process, and cost savings for future exterior coating systems. In this paper an attempt is made to assess the feasibility of such a system, as well as, to anticipate effects on manufacturing operations, cost, and production time. The new coating system is designed for car paint application of primers and other base and/or topcoats using common pigmented two component (2C) polyurethane car paints. Radiation curable coating systems have been proposed in several U.S. and international patents, f.ex. Hodakowski et. al. in (1).³