The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Ford Motor Company of Canada's 40th Anniversary in Oakville Congratulations from all of us at Young & Rubicam. f rty th , till ' ump er 'to - umper tr 1C In 1 e. MI iilllllllllil 'Ill),!?, ll lilill till ll illlliii The benefits of this type of paint application are numerous. First, the thickness of the paint can be exactly controlled and secondly, there is little in the way of overspray, which sig- niricantly reduces waste and, there- fore, cost. The other big advantage is that because there is so little waste, the resulting environmental impact is kept to a minimum. At the present time, 93% of all cars painted come out of the paint shop with a perfect paint job. This low rejection rate is a clear indication of the precision of the process. At the heart of the new paint shop are seven downdraft spray booths, complete with water separators (the separators are used to catch any excess paint). Each of the booths are fully automated with robots painting the entire car with the exception of the door frame and door. The secret to the process is the manner in which the paint is applied. It is applied using an electrostatic paint process. The paint is charged with about 9,000 volts, while the cars are grounded. The effect created means that the paint is attracted to the car in much the same manner as iron filings are attracted to a magnet, The building went from ground- breaking to production-tested in just 16 months, about half the time taken for similar projects in the past. Ford, ABB Paint Finishing and Fluor Daniel formed a partnership, allow- ing the companies' project teams to work as one. This assured quality, budget, and timing requirements were optimized. As well as being completed in less time, the construc- tion costs were reduced by about 15%. The building is 800,000 square feet over three floors and is connect- ed to the main assembly plant by a 1.900-foot overhead conveyor. The addition of the paint shop expanded the size of the assembly plant by 20% to 3.2 million square feet. ord's new paint facility is the most modern operation cur- Frently operating in North America and represents - at $439 million - the largest single invest- ment made by Ford in Canada in its 88-year history. By GRAEME FLETCHER Special to the Beaver New paint facility represents Ford's largest single investment in Canada Young (b' Rubicam The biggest enemy of any paint facility is dust. To reduce the possi- bility of a marred finish because of dust. the entire building is slightly pressurized. Inside, the building is broken up into several different "cells" (areas where different opera- tions are carried out). The paint booth cell is operated at the highest pressure with each of the other cells operating at slightly lower pressures. The result is that air is constantly moving in an outward direction and so when someone opens a door. clean filtered air escapes rather than dirty air being allowed in. In desig- nated "clean" areas (anywhere after the car has been prepared for paint- ing) all employees must wear lint- free coveralls and hair nets. This again reduces the risk of dust. In the spray booth and oven cells, the num- ber of workers is kept to a minimum. This helps cleanliness and reduces the health concerns associated with paint and the heat required to bake it. When the cars enter the paint facility, the first stage is to preheat thesheetmetaltoremovealldinand grease. From there, it moves on to have the Boom applied. This is the electrocoating of primer. which involves dipping the car in a tank while passing an electric current through the car and paint solution. The beauty of this is that the paint is attracted to places which would oth- erwise be impossible to coat. From there, the car is dried and then has An inspection line crew at the Ford paint facility checks the finished painted cars for any imperfections. (Photo by Riziero Venom) _ w i'" C: h! i t , I , ti ti 2irid 1 ’5 "._' if!“ :2.) _l)ii'ii,i1ttt,itty.. bitt') The good news for the Oakville areahason1ybeenulftokibecause Ford intends to spend another S500 million in retooling the Oakville assembly plant in petunia: for the start of production of the all-new Wmdstar mini-van. Each car takes about eight hours to go through the whole process. At the present time, the paint facility is operating at about 72 cars per hour. When the new Winstar mini-van comes to production. the rate will increase to 100 vehicles per hour. Most people think of primer as being either red or grey (which it was at one time). The problem with those two colors is that they are sometimes hard to cover, meaning additional cost or complaints that you could actually see the primer through the top coat. As is obvious, using a color-keyed primer solves these two nasty headaches. Having had the appropriate primer applied. the car moves on to have the final coat applied. The whole lot is then baked to ensure a nice hard and durable finish. Once dry, the car then goes through final inspection. where any less-than-perfect cars are removed and repaired, The cars are then returned to the assembly line. the anti-chip coating applied to the lower body panel areas. With that done, the car then gets a second coat of primer. This time though, the primer is color-keyed to match the rmal paint color. 1mm WHEN” I 1H i“ 1H Js,llhihi0fhhlliifiJ)ijior W? SWEEP; mm Wednesday, June MEI! “ll , SSISSAUGI Oakvlllo Bower "