International. Audi customers will be able to drive even more individualized cars in the future, thanks to a partial mat. With the Special Edition No. 2 of the Audi Q2, the brand is using its innovative painting process for the first time in volume production.
A thin beam lifts the top layer of paint and creates a mat image. In this way, letters, logos or photos can be displayed on the painted sheet metal with pixel precision and abrasion resistance. Audi is the first automaker to offer its customers this type of individualization.
A team from the technology development division at Audi's site in Ingolstadt developed a partial mat. The technology is patented. In the first step, an employee glues a template made of thin plastic film onto the painted component, in this case, a side sheet of the Audi Q2. A specially developed system sprays the component under vacuum, similar to Sand Blasting, with a fine powder of crushed glass. This removes a few thousandths of a millimeter from the top layer of transparent lacquer and at the same time softens it slightly. This difference in surface structure allows the pattern to stand out clearly after you remove the template.
Each painted surface on the inside or outside of the car can be individualized in this way. "With this process, we have gained a huge advantage over our competitors," says Dr. Erhard Brandl, Head of Sheet/Metal Paint Technology Development.
With the partial mat, every micrometer counts: the spray force should not be too high, otherwise the underlying layer of paint would be damaged. "Now, for the first time, we have managed to combine this extreme precision with the robustness of volume production," explains Marco Karig, project manager at Audi Planung GmbH.
Already in the summer of 2016, Audi put the first cars with partial mats on the road, in a very small number of only 24: the "24h selection" edition of the Audi R8 Coupe V10 plus caught the eye with its letters "R8" tangled on the sides of CFRP.
The partial mat was mainly made by hand at that time. Since then, the five-man team has greatly improved, automated and accelerated the process: putting mat on a side sheet for the Audi Q2 now only takes about a minute. Employees of the Ingolstadt paint shop can also easily process larger components: with the special model "TT 20 Years" on the twentieth anniversary of the TT series, for example, audi rings on the side skirts are partially on mats.
The process has also developed significantly from an ecological point of view. Thanks to the ingenious vacuum technology, the fine abrasive matter is immediately absorbed and reused.
Source: Audi.
