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On 14 Jan 2003 at 23:48, John Jaranson wrote: > Another point against dedicated color booths is the "take rate" for each > color. For example in 1968 the Type 3 was available in 9 different colors > according to Dave Hall's website. > With 235,000 or so Type 3 built in 1968, lets make a few assumptions. Black > and white each got 20% of the market. They have historically been very > popular colors. Dark Blue and Dark Green and Beige each got 10% and the > remaining 4 colors each got 5% of the market. For those last four colors > you are only looking at a bit over 11,000 cars a year. You could never > justify the investment cost of a dedicated paint both for that few cars. > Even if you threw in 5% of the 1,000,000 or so beetles made in 1968, you are > only talking about 61,000 cars a year. That works out to on the order of 10 > jobs an hour if running 3 shifts. I would expect that they are running at > least twice that. We run something like 40-45 jobs an hour today. No way > could they justify a dedicated paint booth for a color if it was only > getting 50% utilization. I accept your point, with a couple of caveats. I don't think black and white were ever very popular colors for type 3s. I've only ever seen a couple of each. I would say that dark blue was probably the most popular type 3 color, followed by light blue, green, red, with black and white way down the list. What do the rest of you think? Still, your point is correct that there are bound to be some colors which just can't support a booth for themsleves, and your (Ford's) method would be the way to go with those low demand colors. I think it was pointed out that there were only 2 shifts working at the Wolfsburg plant, which helps utilization a lot. This is just a guess, but I'd be willing to bet that VW spent significantly more time painting each body in 1968 than Ford does today. Robotic painting is a big factor, but I think VW also put on a lot more paint. > As for the waste of paint, The hose disconnects from the gun and only > the tiny bit in the gun head itself gets purged. This is probably less > than they lost in overspray in the old days. I suspect too that > frequent color changes and the necessary purges also ensured that the > operator cleaned the gun regularly. If you are always spraying the > same color, you would be far less likely to clean the gun regularly, > probably not until it actually clogs up and stops working . <G> Do they have an extra solvent line that they flush thru the gun between colors? I'd think they'd want to, but maybe they have guns that don't need this, or maybe they just start painting on a part of the car that doesn't matter, or that will get more paint later. Clogs really shouldn't happen if the paint kitchen is doing a good job; they should have filters at their end which take care of this. Do you know if this really continues to be a problem? The place I used to work used a pressure pot for painting up until I became the painter's boss. Together, we changed everything over to syphon feed guns because we just never had the volume that would make a pressure feed system practical. I can't believe that they spent years painting a half quart at a time then flushing 30 feet of hose and the pot just to switch colors. We had a 5 gallon pressure pot and in the entire time we used it I don't think we ever mixed more than 1/2 gallon of paint at a time. What a waste of time, paint, money, solvent, pollution.... -- ******************************* Jim Adney, jadney@vwtype3.org Madison, Wisconsin, USA ******************************* ------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <type3-off@vwtype3.org> For more help, see http://vwtype3.org/list/