Aston Martin improves painting performance with ABB robots

March 22, 2012 - PRLog -- “The IRB 5500 is ideal for this application,” comments Robert Low, Account Manager for ABB’s robotics business in the UK. “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 coordinated to provide optimum quality.

Minimal wastage
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 always kept to a minimum.

A high performance solution
“The IRB 5500 robot, combined with RB1000 atomisers, presented the best way of meeting Aston Martin’s requirements,” comments Low. “ABB’s market leading technology assists Aston Martin to achieve world class paint finish quality.”

Low continues, “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.”

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ABB Robotics is a leading supplier of industrial robots, providing robot software, peripheral equipment, modular manufacturing cells and service for welding, handling, assembly, painting and finishing, picking, packing, palletizing and machine tending.