Car painting technology series interview with Volvo Cars

Yao Yu, who has been in the automotive coating industry for 14 years, is mainly engaged in the planning, design and management of the process and equipment of the automotive coating line, and joined the manufacturing engineering department of Volvo Cars Chengdu plant from GAC in 2011, serving as the coating ME equipment and process planning manager.
1, Volvo Cars is the biggest feature of safety, Volvo Cars in terms of safety some of the core technologies. What is the responsibility and mission of Wal-Bust?
: "The car is driven by people,
Chinese
." Therefore, the principle of everything we do at Volvo is, and must be , safe. "The basic guidelines set out by Volvo Cars' co-founders, Asa Gebrickson and Gustav Larson, at the beginning of the brand, made safety the brand DNA of Volvo Cars. Over the past 91 years, Volvo Cars has created numerous firsts in safety technology, accumulated rich technical assets, and is known worldwide for "making the safest cars", including three-point seat belts, rear-end child safety seats, car safety compartments, automotive safety glass, urban safety systems with automatic detection and braking capabilities, road deviation protection systems and intersection automatic braking technology. Volvo's safety technology research and development covers the five major aspects of daily driving (normal driving, risk intervention, collision avoidance, occupant protection, after a collision) to protect the safety of drivers, passengers, pedestrians and all other road traffic participants. Volvo's safety vision is that "by 2020, no one will have been seriously injured or injured by driving a new Volvo."
2, a series of environmental protection regulations have been issued, the Ministry of Finance of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Action Plan for the Reduction of Volatile Organic Matters in Key Industries, the General Office of the State Council issued the Implementation Plan for the Control of Pollutant Emissions Permit System (hereinafter referred to as the Program), and the first environmental protection tax law was implemented on January 1, 2018. In view of the environmental protection policy on the coating requirements, your company in the old coating line transformation and new coating line construction specifically did what solutions?
YaoYu: Now the state issued new regulations, such as Sichuan Province also introduced the latest organic emission standard DB51 / 2377-2017, the car coating unit area of VOCs emissions from the original 120g / m2 adjusted to 35g / m2, benzene has more stringent requirements; Additional exhaust gas collection (wheel) and combustion (RTO) treatment systems have been put into stable operation for one year, VOCs emission concentration can reach 20mg/m3 or less, and the removal of glue dryers is being retrofitted to significantly reduce energy consumption: for new coating lines, we will use new processes and materials, water-based coatings and compact processes, which can effectively reduce organic emissions and energy consumption.
3 "water-based, high solids, solvent-free, radiation curing, powder" the direction of these five green coatings has been established, from your company how to recognize and choose these environmental protection coatings?
: "The state's control of VOC emissions is mainly through the control of the total amount, but also control the emission concentration and rate, the future will face increasing environmental pressure." Safety and environmental protection has always been Volvo's core values, but also Volvo adhering to the concept, Volvo Chengdu plant planning began to use water-based coatings, high-solid coatings are also used by many automotive companies, but also the direction of automotive coating development, high-solid coatings to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, water-based coatings to reduce VOC emissions to contribute more. Volvo Cars uses water-based coatings, electrophoresis coatings using BASF's high-swimming permeable hydrophoresis coatings, medium coatings using Hemmerat's water-based medium coating, solid content of more than 50%, color paint using BASF and Asda water-based paint, varnish using Asda 2K paint, Volvo Cars Chengdu plant is the first in China to use water-based SSD glue automatic coating plant.
powder coating is also the direction of automotive coating development, but spray equipment and color switching is still a difficult problem, currently has a large number of metal parts used.
4 China has made new energy vehicles one of its seven strategic industries. General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed that the development of new energy vehicles is the only way for China to move from a big automobile country to a powerful automobile country. What layout does your company make in new energy vehicles?
: Volvo is actively layout new energy vehicles, polaris Polestar's Chengdu plant is under construction, and the first model, the Polestar 1, is scheduled to be mass produced next year.
from 2019, all new Volvo Cars models will be equipped with electric motors, including mid-hybrid, plug-in hybrid and pure electric. This is the automotive industry's most comprehensive electrification strategy to date, and Volvo Cars has become the first traditional car company in the world to pursue a comprehensive electrification strategy. In addition, Volvo Cars announced at the 2018 Beijing International Auto Show that it will further deepen its electrification strategy by announcing a 50% increase in sales of pure electric vehicles by 2025.
5 lightweighting is also a hot topic in the automotive industry, what does your company do in lightweighting and what challenges does lightweighting pose to coating?
: Carbon fiber, aluminum alloy are automotive materials lightweight mainstream materials.
carbon fiber needs to use low-temperature paint, in addition to the spray pass rate is low, the return injection rate is high, need to break through the bottleneck in the process, how to improve the one-time offline rate is a technical difficulty. Carbon fiber using low-temperature paint adhesion is very poor, the primer part needs to use two-component water-based paint, medium coating also needs to use two-component coating, while carbon fiber and plastic parts are also very different, carbon fiber molding will form a lot of holes, in the coating needs hole filling, welding process grinding and adhesive process on dust protection requirements are very high, carbon fiber strength is high, deformation is very old repair, can only be replaced, the new challenge.
aluminum alloy use will continue to increase (body lightweight), the original model wing does not use aluminum alloy, later wing will also use aluminum alloy, increase aluminum alloy content, and high-strength steel content is also increasing to meet vehicle safety. Aluminum alloy also has some defects, aluminum alloy and paint adhesion and flexibility is not as good as steel, easy to produce paint residue. Aluminum alloy conductivity is good, will lead to electrophoresis coating replacement frequency is high.
new energy vehicle motor is one of the three core parts, no engine, motor metal parts on the paint challenges, the need to use insulation coatings. It can save energy and improve the performance of the motor.
new materials and new processes can pose new challenges to coating.
6 Energy conservation and environmental protection can promote the green development of the automotive industry chain, your company in energy conservation and environmental protection has done what work.
: After installing the equipment at Volvo's Chengdu plant in 2012, we added waste heat recovery devices, saving more than 1 million energy costs per year. Added a VOC treatment equipment, varnish exhaust gas did not discharge directly to the chimney, to go through high temperature combustion treatment and then discharge, responsible for enterprises and society; Powder table adjustment to liquid table adjustment is also very energy and water savings, previously powder table adjustment needs to change the material once every 2 weeks, now liquid table adjustment only needs to change the material once every six months. At the same time, phospholipid-free agents are also planned to switch, film treatment technology is also under study.
how to improve efficiency and reduce costs is Volvo's eternal theme. 7 "independent innovation" is the vitality of enterprises, how can Volvo "independent innovation" and those achievements?
YaoYu: Volvo plant has been running smoothly for 5 years, independent innovation, sustainable development is our core theme, mainly through the Group's planning objectives (such as 2020 KPI to meet certain requirements, how much cost reduction, how much material reduction, etc.) and the rationalization of the plant parts of the proposal to promote Volvo's independent innovation from the bottom up and top down. Volvo is also recruiting mature technical personnel to strengthen its research and development capabilities, Volvo's global research and development center has a history, there are many very experienced engineers, these engineers are very loyal to the company, they have studied in a certain field for a lifetime, but also very artisan spirit. Volvo is a global organization, the Volvo Group has many global professional meetings, manufacturing engineering engineers not only understand the factory situation, engineers 1-2 weeks regularly participate in professional meetings with Europe for technical exchanges, technical reports, new products / new materials / new process technology exchanges, engineers also regularly go to Europe to learn about the latest technology to promote independent innovation.
There are many cases of independent innovation, such as Chengdu factory at that time planning is glue drying coating line, our manufacturing engineering department through research that the glue drying trunk can be cancelled, through the wet and wet process, after drying together, a year can save operating costs of 3 million, waste heat recovery device, powder into liquid table tone, pasta polishing light from 2 lines into a line and many other independent innovation results.
8 Volvo Cars' vision for the next 5-10 years?
: Volvo Cars aims to become a global automotive industry leader and consumer travel service provider by 2025. By then, half of the company's annual sales will be all-electric vehicles, a third will be self-driving cars, and half of the cars will be contracted to buy new models.
that by 2025, driving the new Volvo will provide owners with a high-quality driving experience for one week a year.
2025, we are committed to delivering a total of 1 million new energy vehicles.