UT Automotive Develops Environmentally Friendly Paint Process For Exterior Mirror Housings
3 March 1998
UT Automotive Develops Environmentally Friendly Paint Process For Exterior Mirror Housings
DEARBORN, Mich., March 3 -- UT Automotive, a United
Technologies company, has developed an environmentally friendly plastics
painting process that dramatically reduces harmful pollutants released into
the atmosphere, while cutting costs and improving efficiency.
The process, developed at UT Automotive's Berne, Ind. facility, eliminates
the need for a primer coat when painting exterior mirror housings. As a
result, UT Automotive has the potential to reduce volatile organic compounds
(VOCs) and hazardous air pollutants with wide spread use of conductive
technology by an estimated 80 tons per year. The process also reduces the
amount of paint needed by 80 percent and clear-coat use by 40 percent when
compared to convention hand spray guns.
"It's our objective to support our customers' efforts to develop
breakthrough technologies that produce environmentally friendly cars and
trucks," said Scott Greer, UT Automotive president. "Often, pollution-
prevention strategies are too costly to implement because of higher materials
cost and the lengthy auto manufacturer qualification and specification
processes. However, with the reduction of paints and the more efficient
process, we believe the Berne facility can recognize a significant cost
savings while helping our customers and the environment."
The new UT Automotive process uses conductive plastics as the base
material for the mirror housings. The plastic used for the mirror housing is
made conductive by extruding it with tiny carbon fibril fillers. The fibrils
create a conductive path for grounding electrically charged paint particles to
the mirror housing.
"We found significant improvements in paint coverage with the first pass
without a cosmetic tradeoff," said Darrin Keiser, UT Automotive paint business
unit manager at the Berne facility. "We also realized that we could paint
many more mirror shells with far less paint."
UT Automotive developed the process in conjunction with the Indiana Clean
Manufacturing Technology and Safe Materials Institute, which recently changed
its name from Indiana Pollution Prevention Institute.
UT Automotive is supplying the new mirrors to Ford for use on the 1998
Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable models. Other UT Automotive OEM customers are
currently considering using this process.
UT Automotive is a $3 billion tier-one supplier of electrical, electronic
and interior trim systems and components to car and light truck manufacturers.
Based in Dearborn, Mich., the company has 40,000 employees and 90
manufacturing, engineering, sales and marketing facilities in 18 countries in
North America, Europe, Asia and South America.
UT Automotive is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hartford, Conn.-based United
Technologies Corp. , which provides a broad range of high-
technology products and services to the aerospace, building systems and
automotive industries.
SOURCE UT Automotive