The Buick Verano is Revolutionizing Painting

Car manufacturers have to consider every aspect of building a car and what it takes to get the job done.  In many cases the building of a car and creation of new technology are what is put into the car and not always what helps a manufacturer save money during the process of building a car.  The build process can often take a lot of energy and certainly cost money. Many manufacturers have worked to streamline process and find new ways to make the parts in order to offer better parts for lower costs than ever before, which translates into greater profits for them and less used energy and resources for the planet.

Whether its finding a way to set up the press to punch out more parts from a piece of sheet metal, the use of aluminum in a build which is much lighter than steel and even during a build can put less stress on the machinery, or finding ways to finish vehicles that costs much less and creates a beautiful finish new ways are typically being testes somewhere to eventually give us a better way to do things.  This is certainly not new in the auto industry considering Henry Ford created the first assembly line and ever since others have been improving and perfecting this process.

Maybe a small part of the savings or cost of the assembly of a vehicle comes down to the paint process, but overall the energy used for painting is actually nearly seventy percent of the overall energy to put a vehicle together.  The fact that it takes 2.5 megawatt hours to paint one car, which is equivalent to nine weeks of energy bills for an average home, the cost, is great when producing thousands of units.  Normally the process requires an oven bake time that is use between the primer and color coat layers, but one brand and vehicle looked for a new way to do this.

Buick started using a different form of painting in their Verano model in 2011 at the Orion Assembly plant.  What they have done is use a water-based “three-wet” paint process which has revolutionized painting vehicles.  This process now paints all three layers of paint; the primer, color and clear coat all while wet and then put the vehicle through the oven one time.  The result is an amazing looking paint job that only took up one megawatt hour of energy for each vehicle resulting in some amazing savings.

As a leader in the industry, Buick continues to look for new and better ways to build their cars along with offering vehicles that appeal to a massive audience.  So far they seem to be on the right track with energy saving techniques that make the painting of a car much more cost effective and uses fewer resources in the process.  What Buick will show us next as their great new process is yet to be seen, but you can be certain it will be worth the price of admission and have you proud if you drive a Buick model.