Ford’s Global 3-Wet Paint Capacity Expands by 50%

Ford’s Global Environmentally Friendly 3-Wet Paint capacity being increased to make its plants more eco-friendly.

The American auto- major Ford is on to increase the capacity of the Ford 3-Wet Paint capacity by 50 percent. This infers that the automaker is incorporating its globally known eco-friendly paint process across four of its plants that are situated in three other continents. These paints will reduce the CO2 emissions by approx. 30 percent at all these plants. Ford was the first company to incorporate technology borne out of the 3-Wet high solids solvent in the year 2007. The company at present holds eight car manufacturing facilities across three continents namely Asia Pacific, North America, and Europe. The number of these plants is going to increase to 12 by end of this year and additional services by the brand will starch across the globe in next four years. As Bruce Hettle, the Director of Manufacturing Engineering, stated that this 3-wet paint technology is much more advanced that the contemporary technologies that are used for applying long lasting paints in a manner that is more cost-efficient, eco-friendly, and high quality. 

This process has been given the name 3wet paint as three coatings of paint are applied one over the other in a manner that the next coat is applied before the former layer gets cured. This procedure eliminates the need of a devoted oven and primer that were previously used in earlier processes. The highly developed chemical composition of this 3-Wet paint allows the painter to apply all the three layers – the primer layer, the basic layer, and the final layer one after the other without having to wait for the former layer to dry up. This technology will help Ford in providing high quality, long lasting, and scratch resistant characteristics to customers that have been asking for it from a long time. This technology is a product of devoted efforts from Ford and its suppliers. This 3-Wet paint is a solvent borne paint formula that saves in total 20 -25 percent of time that is spent in painting. It also helps Ford in saving its electricity that is spent in blowers that circulate large amount of airs through paint cabins and natural gas from the paint cure ovens and air. This ultimately reduces carbon dioxide emissions and volatile organic products that are produced from contemporary solvent borne paints and medium solid borne paints.

This technique was pilot launch at Ohio Assembly Plant around five years ago. Ford’s Global paint technology has led to reduction in CO₂ emissions by as much as thirty percent. While the emission of Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) has gone down by 10 percent. This is a remarkable improvement as compared to other present day paint processes.

At present Ford is implementing this Ford Global 2013 process at four plants that are:

·        Valencia Assembly Plant, Valencia, Spain;

·        Flat Rock Assembly Plant, Flat Rock, Michigan;

·        Kansas City Assembly Plant, Claycomo, Mo;

·        JIangling Motors Co. Ltd., Jiangzi/Nanchang, China;

Plants at which this technology is presently being applied are:

Asia Pacific:

·        CAF2, Chongqing, China;

·        Chennai Assembly, Tamil Nadu, India;

·        Ford Thailand Manufacturing, Rayong, Thailand;

Europe:

·        Craiova Assembly Plant, Craiova, Romania

North America:

·        Ohio Assembly Plant, Avon Lake, Ohio;

·        Louisville Assembly Plant, Louisville, Ky;

·        Michigan Assembly Plant, Wayne, Michigan;

·        Cuautitlan Assembly Plant, Cuautitlan, Mexico.

The Chennai, India based plant of Ford is the first plant that implemented the 3-Wet paint technology. Also in India itself it is the only car manufacturer that uses this technique. The company uses automated robots that apply all the three layers one over the other before oven curing.