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I. Overview of the Automotive Industry
Electrification:
Current Status and Trends: Sales of electric vehicles continue to grow rapidly, with penetration rates steadily increasing. Battery technology and charging infrastructure remain key bottlenecks. Hybrid vehicles, as a transitional solution, still hold an important position.
Lightweighting:
Widespread use of high-strength steel, aluminum alloys, magnesium alloys, engineering plastics, and composite materials. Multi-material hybrid body structures have become the mainstream. This poses new challenges for material joining technologies, manufacturing processes, and coating processes.
Sustainability and Circular Economy:
Focus on the environmental impact across the entire lifecycle, including raw material extraction, production manufacturing (zero-carbon factories), the usage phase, and end-of-life recycling and reuse. Promote the use of renewable materials and recyclable materials. Drive the entire supply chain toward a more environmentally friendly and sustainable direction.
II. The Profound Impact on the Coatings Industry
Automotive coatings are a critical component of vehicle production, directly influencing a vehicle’s appearance, durability, and functionality. The aforementioned trends in the automotive industry have exerted a comprehensive and profound impact on the coatings industry:
Environmental regulations drive technological innovation
Water-based, high-solids, and powder coatings replace solvent-based coatings: To comply with increasingly stringent VOC emission regulations, the use of traditional solvent-based coatings in automotive painting has significantly decreased. Water-based coatings have become the mainstream for body intermediate coats and topcoats. High-solid solvent-based coatings are still used in certain areas. Powder coatings are seeing increased application in wheel rims, chassis components, engine compartment interior parts, and certain body primer applications.
Impact: Coating formulation technology, coating processes (baking temperature, humidity control), and coating equipment all require corresponding adjustments, increasing technical complexity and initial investment costs.
New demands brought about by electrification:
Battery-related coatings: Battery casings require excellent corrosion resistance, insulation, flame retardancy, and thermal conductivity/heat dissipation coatings. Functional coatings may also be required for the electrodes and separators inside the battery. Motors and electronic control systems require protective coatings with high temperature resistance, corona resistance, insulation, and good thermal conductivity.
Lightweight component coatings: Surface treatment and coating processes for lightweight materials such as aluminum alloys and composite materials differ from those for traditional steel sheets. Specialized primers, pretreatment agents, and processes must be developed to ensure adhesion, corrosion resistance, and consistent appearance.
Challenges posed by lightweight materials to coating processes:
Different materials on the same vehicle body require distinct pretreatment and coating processes, increasing production line complexity and quality control challenges. There is a need to develop versatile or adaptable coating products.
Diversification and personalization of exterior design:
Innovation in effect pigments: Increasing consumer demand for personalized vehicle exteriors has driven the development and application of special effect pigments.
Customized colors: Growing demand for small-batch, quick-color-change production has imposed flexibility requirements on coating production and color-matching systems.
Impact: Coating suppliers must possess strong color design and effect development capabilities, while coating lines require more precise process control.
Enhanced functional and durability requirements:
Self-healing coatings: Growing demand for clear coats that can automatically repair minor scratches.
Scratch resistance: Higher requirements for clear coats to withstand scratches from car wash brushes, branches, etc.
Easy-to-clean/anti-soiling coatings: Reduce stain adhesion, facilitate cleaning, and enhance appearance durability.
Extreme environment resistance: With the global proliferation of electric vehicles, coatings must adapt to a wider range of climatic conditions (extreme cold, extreme heat, high humidity, and strong UV radiation).
Production efficiency and cost pressures:
Developing “three coats and one bake” or even “two coats and one bake” processes to reduce the number of coating layers and baking cycles, thereby lowering energy consumption, shortening production cycles, and reducing costs. This places higher demands on the coating’s hiding power, flow properties, and first-pass yield.
The industrial dispensing equipment must closely follow the development pace of the automotive industry, continuously innovate technologically, iterate products, and upgrade services to meet the increasingly complex and stringent requirements of original equipment manufacturers and maintain a leading position in intense market competition. In the future, coatings will not only serve as the “outer shell” of vehicles but also as critical functional materials enabling vehicle performance, safety, intelligence, and environmental sustainability goals.
III. Innovative Directions for Coatings Production Equipment
3.1.Liquid Dispensers:
Nano-level Micro-addition: Develop technology capable of precisely adding micro-effect pigments and functional additives (such as conductive agents and antimicrobial agents) to meet the demands of special effect paints and functional coatings.
AI Paint Tinting System Integration: Utilize AI algorithms to analyze color tinting data in real-time, automatically adjust formulations, reduce manual intervention, and enhance first-mix success rates (particularly for complex metallic paints and gradient paints).
Multi-Formula Quick Switching: Support small-batch customized production, enabling automatic formula cleaning and zero-residue switching.
Zero-Pollution Color Change Technology: Self-cleaning flow path design, switching colors within 5 seconds, adding compatibility channels for water-based/solvent-based coatings, and reducing waste.
High Precision and Small-Batch Processing: Raw material usage reduced from 200 grams to 50 grams, with precision of ±1g, supporting ERP system integration to achieve a digital production closed-loop.
Explosion-proof and static elimination design: Addressing the high volatility of coatings for new energy vehicle battery packs, the color matching machine is equipped with Ex dⅡBT4 explosion-proof certification. The filling gun and container are grounded with interlocking, and the equipment automatically shuts down when not grounded.
Color management software integration:
Integrated with color management software, precisely calculates coating consumption, accurately calculates the formulation ratio of new or old inks, and improves residual ink utilization.
3.2.Liquid Filler Machine:
Dynamic viscosity compensation: Liquid filler equipped with an online viscosity sensor, it automatically adjusts the filling speed and pressure to ensure high filling accuracy (±0.1%) for high-solids/water-based coatings.
Multi-specification adaptive filling: The filling machine switches between different specifications of buckets, seamlessly switching between 1L to 200L packaging, supporting small batch custom orders, and adapting to a variety of production requirements.
Explosion-proof design for conductive coatings: Intrinsically safe (Ex ia) explosion-proof motor + static elimination device, meeting the safety production requirements for battery pack coatings.
Servo-controlled multi-head filling: A single servo motor drives 12 pistons to operate independently, controlling the filling valve and suction valve through pulse counts, supporting dual-speed filling (fast and slow).
3.3.Mixer Machine For Paint:
Low shear mixing technology: Developed for formulations containing fragile effect pigments (such as ultra-thin aluminum flakes) or microcapsules (self-healing coatings), this technology employs low shear mixing/vibration modes to prevent structural damage.
Temperature-controlled paint mixing system: Integrated heating/cooling modules meet the temperature-sensitive requirements of formulations such as low-temperature curing coatings and UV coatings.
Inert gas protection: Prevents oxidation of water-based coatings or settling of effect pigments, enhancing stability.
Variable-frequency drive mixer: Adjusts power as needed to reduce energy consumption (e.g., running at reduced speed when processing low-viscosity water-based paints).
Intelligent viscosity adaptive system: Monitors viscosity in real time (using an online rheometer) and automatically adjusts speed and time to ensure stability of functional materials such as battery insulation coatings.
3.4.Paint Shaker：
Variable Frequency 3D Oscillation Technology:Dynamically adjusts oscillation frequency based on paint viscosity (e.g., 20 Hz for water-based paint, 50 Hz for high-solid paint), paired with an IGBT rectifier to improve energy efficiency by over 10%.
Temperature-Controlled Oscillation Integration:Integrated Peltier semiconductor cooling (-10°C to 50°C) prevents crystallization of low-temperature curing paint during storage.
Energy Recovery System:Converts kinetic energy into electrical energy for storage, reducing energy consumption during high-load oscillation.
Sealed Design:Fully enclosed color matching/filling system: Eliminates VOC emissions, compliant with ISO 14000 and other environmental standards, suitable for the production of water-based coatings and high-solid coatings.
Automatic cleaning and recovery: The equipment is equipped with an in-place cleaning system, reducing solvent consumption and recovering residual coatings.
Ⅳ.Conclusion: The Transformative Future of Automotive Coatings
The automotive industry’s relentless pursuit of electrification, lightweighting, sustainability, and personalization is fundamentally reshaping the role and demands of automotive coatings. Coatings are no longer merely protective and aesthetic layers but have evolved into multifunctional materials critical to vehicle performance, safety, durability, and environmental responsibility. Faced with these multidimensional challenges and opportunities, the coatings industry must closely align with the development pace of automotive OEMs, driving continuous technological innovation, product iteration, and service upgrades. From revolutionary coating formulation development to highly intelligent, flexible, and environmentally friendly production equipment innovations, every step is critical. As seen in equipment innovations such as AI color matching, nano-level additives, dynamic viscosity compensation, and low-shear mixing, these advanced technologies are not only tools to meet current stringent requirements but also the foundation for shaping future competitiveness.
