Lotus, a British sports car manufacturer, relies on the high quality and efficiency of Durr's technologies to automate its body painting facility at its British headquarters in Hethel.
The modernization project consists in the installation of an automated coating line which includes a special paint supply and conveyor systems. During the award process, Dürr won over global competition thanks to its extremely efficient and environmentally friendly technologies. The contract was awarded in 2019 and the new body painting facility is expected to be commissioned in 2021.
Up to now Lotus has painted all its sports cars manually, but in the future it will host at its headquarter in Hethel a paint shop for the external painting which boasts four EcoRP E133 six-axis and rail painting robots.
When it came to designing the new paint shop, the British manufacturer's top priority was to have an extremely effective process while maintaining the high quality of the current manual spraying process. With composite body panels coated with conductive primer, a pair of robots apply primer and clear coat in one mixed spray booth, while a second pair of robots apply colour coat in another booth. The robots not only paint, but are also designed thanks to their modular design to open the body doors and hoods.
EcoSupply P supplies the paint with the pigging system in an economic and fast way
All Lotus cars are built to order with Lotus Exclusive, which allows customers to
customize their car according to their individual needs, making their car unique in terms of refined finishes and colours. Customers will be able to choose from a potentially infinite range of colours for all model lines. Individualisation including stripes and highlights will continue to be painted manually.
In order to be able to supply such a variety of colours in small quantities, EcoSupply P paint supply systems will be installed, which pump the various paints to the painting booth in hoses - with almost zero losses that reduce paint waste . This special paint supply system also minimizes the consumption of cleaning material and colour change times compared to traditional ring line systems.
EcoDry Rack is energy efficient, safe and environmentally friendly
EcoDry Rack is an extremely compact multi-stage overspray filter system with permanently installed filter walls, which offer the advantages of dry separation. This system also saves on running costs and is
environmentally friendly as it does not work with either water-based or chemical formulations.
This technology is environmentally friendly, in fact up to 95 percent of the supply air can be recycled as recirculated air, reducing energy consumption in the paint booth by more than 60 percent compared to a classic wet scrubbing system and lowering consequently the rate of CO2 emissions. EcoDry rack is easy-to-use and repair as the filters, once saturated, can be replaced during the production break or at weekends.