3M and General Motors announced their partnership for automating paint repair on a moving production line.
GM is using 3M’s Finesse-it™ Robotic Paint Repair System which incorporates 3M robotics, stream motion software, process modeling, and abrasive technology to fix imperfections in the paint topcoat on vehicles coming off the assembly line. GM installed the system at its Spring Hill, Tenn., plant where the automaker manufactures Cadillac SUVs, and is exploring more installations and applications of the system at other facilities in the future.
Ryan Odegaard, GM’s Director of Paint Polymers and Additive Manufacturing at GM, called implementing the 3M Finesse-it Paint Repair System the “final frontier of automation” for the automaker’s high-volume paint shop.
“At GM, many of our processes are already automated and this is a very complicated area to think about automating,” Odegaard said. “If you have a customer-facing product, you have to make sure that that paint finish is perfect because it’s the first thing you see when you go into a dealership.”
At CES, Marcus Pelletier, Global R&D Director of Systems Development at 3M, said that all comes together as the robotic arms, tipped with 3M abrasive discs, descend on the vehicle to fix surface imperfections in the paint job.
“We are streaming information to that robot approximately every 10 milliseconds,” Pelletier said. “Because we’re doing it in real-time, if we detect something when the tool touches the car … we can modify our trajectories dynamically on the fly so that we end in the right spot every time.”