Aston Martin improves painting performance with ABB robots

Aston Martin is benefiting from a high-quality paint finish following the introduction of four wall-mounted ABB IRB 5500 robots in the basecoat and clear coat painting booths. With their large working envelope, the robots paint the complete car body, covering both the chassis and the bumpers attached at front and rear.

Robert Low, the Account Manager for ABB's robotics business, comments: "The IRB 5500 is ideal for this application. The 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, achieving consistent high finish quality and minimising the amount of paint required."

ABB's Integrated Process System (IPS), a closed-loop process system, ensures that both the robot motion and paint process control are precisely synchronised to provide optimum quality. For the basecoat application, the RB1000 is used in its cartridge bell system version, providing the necessary isolation of the high voltage that is directly applied to the waterborne paint droplets. The system ensures that each paint cartridge is filled with precisely the required amount of paint, so that waste is minimised.

Low comments: "The IRB 5500 robot combined with RB1000 atomisers presented the best way of meeting Aston Martin's requirements. ABB's market-leading technology assists Aston Martin to achieve world-class paint finish quality.

"The addition of an ABB engineer, who stayed on site to help Aston Martin with the first three months of the project going live, provided extensive training to the production engineers, as well as being on hand for technical support."

For more information on ABB's IRB 5500 robot and RB1000 atomiser, email robotics@gb.abb.com quoting "IRB 5500, Aston Martin, MachineBuilding.net".