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Letter to the Editor

PPG's New Automotive Coating System Produces Color-on-Demand for Five-Day Car

FLINT, Mich. -- PPG Industries and Behr Systems, Inc. have joined forces to make personalized vehicle colors a reality with the development of the Dynamic FlexColors system, which was demonstrated this week during PPG's automotive coatings technology fair at its recently expanded application and development facility in Flint, Mich.

The design of the Dynamic FlexColors system enables coatings components and application technologies to work in conjunction to meet the level of flexibility required for the industry's five-day car and mass customization concepts.

"The automotive industry is using e-commerce to strive for the build-to- order or five-day car, but offering a large color palette is still one of the major obstacles to achieving this goal because it is difficult to provide in a flexible manufacturing environment," said Vincent P. Dattilo, manager, Global Applications Technology for PPG. "By reinventing the coatings technology and process, the Dynamic FlexColors system enables us to change vehicle colors on the fly to introduce specialized colors or replace less popular colors."

Currently, the automotive coating process mass produces almost identical vehicles painted in groups or blocks by color. With each color change, the paint line must be purged and cleaned, increasing material waste. Additionally, the color palette is often limited to 10 colors or less, and personal or specialized colors are not feasible without prohibitive scheduling, handling, change-over downtime and significant cost.

The patent-pending Dynamic FlexColors system operates on the same premise as a color (computer) printer, adding pigment to coating materials at the paint atomizer. This unique painting system can be used to apply colored primers, basecoats or tinted clearcoats.

Tests conducted by PPG show coatings produced by the Dynamic FlexColors system substantially improve metallic color and overall appearance of the vehicle body. It permits coatings to be applied 100 percent by electrostatic bell atomizers in a variety of climate conditions with enhanced color flexibility, coatings functionality and product performance by redesigning traditional three-layer primer and basecoat systems into a consolidated two- layer process.

According to Dattilo, a prototype of the Dynamic FlexColors system is currently being tested at Behr's Auburn Hills, Mich. facility. Tests showed the process is feasible in traditional manufacturing plants and is cost effective when production is focused on lower volume or niche vehicle painting. The companies expect the system to become commercialized in 2003.

PPG and Behr are currently working together to enable existing higher volume production plants to benefit from flexible vehicle painting with the development of the Dynamic MiniBlend system. With this system, large tanks are replaced by smaller specialty day tanks for low-running colors and are connected to the Dynamic FlexColors system. The colors are mixed in the tanks on a just-in-time basis.

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