Painting of aluminium panels – state of the art and development issues

Abstract

Auto-makers plan a broad shift from steel to aluminium uses over the next decade. In North America, for example, the target is to have 18% of vehicles having all-aluminium bodies by 2025, in spite of that only less than 1% has been achieved in 2014. To achieve this transformation, painting aluminium panels in a mass-production scale with high quality is an important requirement to be met, considering that for long-term protection and surface appearance of the vehicles to be made as well as cost issues. This paper presents a review work carried out on the key elements concerning the painting process, progress in research and applications. Special issues concerning painting aluminium, including the pretreatment of panels surface before e-coat application and the pretreatment of panels before paint baking, are particularly addressed, and remaining issues relating to high quality painting in mass production are discussed.