ABB Robotics - Painting and sealing innovation with Volvo

The new Volvo S60L that went on sale in December 2013 in Beijing provides drivers with a quieter, cleaner, safer and more comfortable driving environment, thanks in part to ABB Robotics. The S60Lis an important car for Volvo, having achieved many “firsts” along the way. For instance, it’s the very first model to be mass-produced at the company’s factory in Chengdu, China—which happens to be the first such factory to be located outside Europe since the Swedish company was acquired by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group in 2010. It is also the first process-validated car produced in China by Volvo using an ABB Robotics solution. As China’s first automobile plant to use an environmentally-friendly, water-based soundproofing and sealing material provided by ABB, Volvo is also exploring new ways to push the barrier for improving the quality of the vehicle interior environment. To implement the use of this waterborne material—developed over a six-month period—required building a fully automated gluing station where robots spray the material onto the cars, thereby sealing, soundproofing and waterproofing them. Thirty-three different ABB robots are now hard at work in the Volvo Chengdu plant. Among them, two robots specialize in NVH applications, two in sprayable sound dampening applications, four in exterior-primer painting, eight in exterior-basecoat painting, four in exterior clearcoat painting, four painting robots, four door openers with one trunk opener in a clearcoat interior station, and four FeatherDuster robots at the pre-cleaning station.