Porsche (almost) dispenses with plastic bungs | Automotive Industry News

Reel-fed robotic applies patches, replacing 3,600 plugs for every shift inserted by hand

Porsche has located a new way to plug automobile physique holes after portray.

Right until now, the holes, which present accessibility for corrosion avoidance coating spray nozzles or paint move in a dip tank, have been sealed after portray with plastic plugs. Instead, a robotic places all around one hundred sealing patches mechanically.

The procedure uses circular patches from supplier Tesa and the automaker promises the procedure gets rid of significant strain on Taycan EV line personnel who formerly experienced to insert, by hand, up to 3,600 plugs for every shift. This also associated overhead do the job.

1 patch dimension is utilised to include all four varieties of gap varieties furthermore, with a thickness of just 1mm, the patches hardly protrude at all, whilst the plugs extend up to 6mm from the physique. A distinctive robotic was designed for the monotonous task.

By July 2020 all around one hundred of the one hundred fifty plugs required in the Taycan paint store in Zuffenhausen experienced been removed and the paint store at Leipzig will be subsequent, by summer months 2021.

Tesa is effectively acknowledged in Germany for office and packaging tape.

Dirk Paffe, Porsche’s scheduling chief for paint store processes, said: “After the distinctive sealing patches have been utilized, they can only be detached again with a great deal of energy. They present [sturdiness] that can also stand up to the stresses of a automobile in motion and [outlive] the automobile.”