Gloss Plastic Could Eliminate Auto Painting 320
customs writes "There is a new plastic out from GE that covers plastic surfaces with a really good sheen. It's more resistant to scratches and random chemicals compared to conventional paint. It's actually a .5 mm polymer called Sollx; the Segway was the first semi-mass-produced product to use it, it has slender two tone fenders. Kinda cool. Auto painting is the industries largest manufacturing expense, and this could be what they're looking for...as soon as the price comes down."
Question for you all... (Score:3, Interesting)
CDs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Explained in the article (Score:5, Interesting)
It never fades. Sunlight's ultraviolet rays trigger a chemical reaction in the Sollx film, forming a protective outer coating that won't decay.
I'd be more concerned about scratches -- how do I touchup a film?
awsome!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Thermocromic fun (Score:3, Interesting)
More info on Smart Cars (Score:5, Interesting)
The article mentions a car that is already available which has full plastic parts. More info can be found at the Smart website [smart.com]. I drive one of these, and I have bumped into obstacles while parking several times. Unlike a metal body, the plastic panel just springs back into shape after a bump. With a metal body, it would have been damaged visibly.
Other Smart drivers reported that after a crash, the car had no visible damge while the invisible parts beneath the body panels had been damaged severely, but the robust body panel had been hiding the damage.
I can really recommend these cars. They are the ultimate opposite to an SUV. 2.49 m long (7.5 feet!), 695 kg gross weight, can turn on a dime... wonderful.
Well (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Explained in the article (Score:2, Interesting)
Possibly Still Economical (Score:3, Interesting)
But I'd also worry about the possibility of a lighter car being less safe.
Not necessarily a good idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you really want a bunch of damaged metal and loose welds hiding under a "seemingly" clean plastic coating?
Not if you're Amish (Score:3, Interesting)
With respect to the improvement of paint, it is a wonderful idea that if successful would avoid a lot of waste in paint's first mission, preserving the vulnerable material underneath. But why don't we find ways to get rid of the sheet metal altogether? Saturn is the only one to have taken it really seriously, and I imagine part of that was the advantage of starting as a new company (yes, as a spinoff of a very old one, but you know what I mean -- UAW didn't even hold their new plant to the standard rules, and that was revolutionary!). They haven't beat the problems, but at least they've tried.
Here's a analogy I heard from a professor: Back in the days of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI used to hold up every year a graph of the steady increase in their interdiction of interstate stolen cars. Problem was, interstate theft was increasing even faster. Then Detroit went to ignition steering wheel locks, eliminating the simple way to steal a car by hot wiring. The rate of theft plummeted. Sometimes changing something fundamental is more efficient that layering on additional layer of protection. (I hope the analogy held, but you get the idea.)
Re:Environmental dangers (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe the question should be: How harmful is the current paint process to the envorinment? (The answer to that is very much so -- probably the most harmful of any part of the car-building process...including the actual driving part for about 50,000 miles). The logical followup is: Compared with the current paint process, how safe is the plastic technique? Is it as recyclable as steel?
Re:This is equally true of steel "skins" (Score:3, Interesting)
It only rusts if you don't take care of it, or if it's of shoddy manufacture to begin with. An '84 323 my dad used to have while we were in England started developing small rust spots after less than two years, even though it was treated just the same as every other vehicle he's owned...washed regularly, washed more frequently when it's snowing, etc. (It was purchased new, so it wasn't a matter of buying someone else's problems.) OTOH, I have a '77 Cutlass Supreme with no rust anywhere...the paint's still in decent shape, too.
Re:This is equally true of steel "skins" (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand plastic cars are bad for the consumer and good for the manufacturer. It can simplify the building process greatly while being able to add shapes to the car that would be impossible to make in metal. Features like that will make the car look better and possibly sell better as well. The bad thing for the consumer is that the life of the car will not rival a car made out of galvanized steel. They may claim that the plastic coating will last forever. Eventually the coating will fade, chip, scratch, etc. And the car will look horrible sometime down the road. In a steel car you can just get the whole thing repainted without a problem. When there is an accident with the plastic car the consumer will have no choice but to replace it from dealer parts.
Some cars that are well over 50 years old are still being used today for recreation. These cars go under intense restorations and customizations over the years.
Plastic cars will not be able to be restored in this way. You can also forget about chopping the roof or anything like that because plastic cars cannot be modified without actually replacing parts.
These plastic cars will do nothing but fuel the throw away culture that in recent years has gained velocity. Nothing today can be really be repaired. Once it goes bad it gets thrown away. This keeps a purpetual need to constantly buy new things of the same item over and over and over. This even applies to computers now. The intel has changed the core multiple times in the p4's and each time not making them backward compatible. Sometimes only a few months goes by when something like that happens.
The whole trend of this started way back when GE and Phillips decided that rather make a lightbulb last forever lets put a limited lifespan on them so we will get repeat sales. Before that nearly every product made could be repaired at a local shop.
IMHO there is nothing that can be done to reverse the process of making every product we own be chinsey. Since we buy stuff with essentially nothing since cash money really has no value anyway. Somewhere down the road when the entire population has turned into brainless automotons because all our decisions are being made by machines there will be nothing left of this great country's rights and ideas that we take for granted today. The govt will eventually win total control over us. This is a basically a law of governments that when their limits are exceeded they will create new limits somehow someway through an endless string of loopholes that will come full circle and suffocate us all.
Re:Thermocromic fun (Score:2, Interesting)
I can see it now... when someone cuts me off my car instantly goes from blue to red, might be useful.
too expensive? (Score:3, Interesting)
There doesn't seem to be any shortage of those on the roads, and this picture [carbuyingtips.com] is an example of what happens when you bump into someone while driving your big fiberglass manhood-enhancer.
Re:Lighter equals Safer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is why I think SUV's are evil. SUV owners frequently mention "my kids/wife will be safer", ignoring the fact that their hurtling behemoth makes the rest of us less safe. The damn things have sparked an arms race in my neck of the woods - everybody wants their kids to be safer and thus, per your observation, they end up making the roads less safe for everyone.
Quite the pair of MDs.
Re:Materials science (Score:4, Interesting)
Lexan is commonly used in automotive racing applications; GT1 and Formula cars (as well as slower machines) sometimes use Lexan windshields (depending on the race circuit's rules) because: