Pretreatment of SMC for Painting

The purpose of this paper is to explore the key features and issues in the pretreatment of automotive exterior sheet molding composite (SMC) prior to painting. In order to clarify the challenges of painting plastic in a production environment, comparisons will be made to an older and more widespread process, the pretreatment of steel. Finally, a process for pretreating plastic will be identified and discussed that has proven to be reliable and cost effective in operations around the world for the past ten years.