Watch BMW’s New Robot Painter Adorn A Car With Custom Designs
Image via Dürr
The carwash isn’t the only automated service for your wheels now. BMW has introduced a new paint shop robot at its plant in Dingolfing, Germany, as part of a partnership with engineering firm Dürr. The automated arm makes unique customizations possible, all while keeping waste at a minimum.
The bot, called the ‘EcoPaintJet Pro’, features an orifice plate with an opening, which is where the ink gets out. As Autoblog and BMW Blog describe, the plate controls how much ink is released, allowing the robot to create patterns at precise, sharp-edge definition with paint thickness of anywhere between one and 50 millimeters.
Traditionally, intricate customizations would be done manually, as masking is required to ensure the paint doesn’t splash outside the intended parameters. The robot, on the other hand, can paint meticulously without the need to cover other parts of the car, as it’s designed to prevent overspray—or the tendency for paint particles to go everywhere. This means that it can easily work on any part of the exterior, too.
Of course, it’s not all about theatrics. The new paint process doesn’t just save labor and material costs—since no ink gets wasted and man-hours are shortened—but BMW says the bot will save it 6,000 megawatt-hours and eliminate carbon emissions by 2,000 tonnes per year.
For now, the service is only for a small selection of BMW M4 Coupe models, but the automaker plans to make it readily available for a wider range of cars soon. In the meantime, watch one of the neat paint jobs in the video below.
[via Autoblog and BMW Blog, cover image via Dürr]
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