EQUIPMENT
/ NEW
"FORD" FAN FEATURES
YES NOT ANYBODY, BUT STRAUSSIAN
If you scrape off the paintwork from a small Fiesta, you’ll get … nine kilograms. They are distributed as follows: two kilos of soil, one and a half primers (a composition that improves the adhesion of varnish to the soil), three and a half - colored base composition and two more - transparent varnish. Knowing this, competitor intelligence can, having counted the wagons with paint, calculate the annual capacity of the plant near Cologne. However, now it’s not a war, there is nothing special to hide: 2691 tons of paints and varnishes are consumed per year. The most popular color is silver metallic.
Painting takes - no less than six hours; while the body travels about four kilometers. Step one - degreasing and phosphating. As a result of the chemical process, a microcrystalline structure forms on the metal, increasing the surface area by six times! This will subsequently ensure good adhesion of the soil layers and serve as a barrier to rust. Fat is removed in a bath containing 273 m3 of solvent heated to 60 ° C, and the phosphate pool is even larger - as much as 331 cubic meters.
Now the body dives for three minutes into the cataphoretic bath, appearing from there already primed. Then it is heated to 175 ° C so that the soil forms a dense strong film.
Only after this comes the turn of anticorrosive and anti-noise mastic. They are applied to joints and seams by robots, and where they cannot be reached are operators. The bottom will additionally protect a layer of polyvinyl chloride from small stones.
The car will shine flawlessly metallic if not a single speck of dust settles under the varnish. Therefore, the body enters under powerful jets of compressed filtered air, and then it is gently stroked by rotating brushes with … real ostrich feathers. (I wonder if the "Ford" bred ostriches themselves?) A primer layer is then applied, which is then dried at 165 ° C. Since this reagent contains organic solvents, air is removed from the chamber only through filters from activated carbon - ecology!
It remains to apply two layers of varnish: the base color and the transparent finish. Outside, robots do it, inside (under the hood, in the trunk, in the passenger compartment) - so far the operators, in our opinion, are painters.
Finally, the body will meticulously inspect the OTC, and then it will be covered with 800 grams of protective mastic - so as not to scratch the fresh paint. Now the path to the assembly is open.
You probably noticed how much attention is paid to the temperature regime. There is an unexpected reason for this. Previously, to heat reagents and air, to heat the factory floor, 76 thousand tons of coal and 10 thousand tons of oil were burned annually. And today, these stocks can doze in the bowels of the earth: instead of them, paint production, for example, is enough … 19 thousand tons of household garbage. In any case, almost 60% of the total heat of 350, 000 MWh consumed by the plant is produced in this way.
