Aston Martin to improve painting performance with ABB robots

British luxury sports car manufacturer Aston Martin is to deploy four wall-mounted ABB IRB 5500 robots to paint both the chassis and bumpers of its future vehicles.

The robots are said to achieve a consistent high quality paint finish performance and minimise the amount of paint required. "The IRB 5500 robot has the longest reach in its class with excellent path accuracy and is combined with the ABB RB1000 electrostatic bell atomiser to achieve an even distribution of paint over the surface of the car," said Robert Low, account manager for ABB's robotics business. ABB's Integrated Process System is designed to ensure that both the robot motion and paint process control are precisely co-ordinated to provide optimum quality. For the basecoat application, the RB1000 is used in its cartridge bell system version to provide the necessary isolation of the high voltage that is directly applied to the waterborne paint droplets. According to ABB, the system ensures that each paint cartridge is filled with precisely the required amount of paint, so that waste is always kept to a minimum.