An innovative method of controlling and optimizing car painting processes

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Terahertz (THz) radiation forms part of the electromagnetic spectrum, between microwave and infrared radiation. It can penetrate a range of materials - including polymers, ceramics and semiconductors - and at the same time it can reveal excellent contrast of the internal microstructures of such materials. This property can be exploited for non-destructive testing by using pulses of terahertz radiation similar to the way radar imaging is performed. Using this measurement principle a number of applications, such as measuring the thickness of polymer coatings on pharmaceutical tablets, havebeen developed. The technology has shown great promise for applications in high value manufacturing and this project aims to open up a new industrial application for terahertz sensing:Painting is an integral part of the manufacturing process in the automotive industry. The paint coats that are applied to modern cars comprise a complex structure of layers, with the integrity of each layer being of critical importance to the overall performance of the coating. The current quality control strategy that is used to ensure the final integrity of the paint coat is slow, requires manual testing and can only cover a limited number of sampling points on a few select cars per test cycle. The main bottleneck behind this lack of real-time testing capability is that there is no non-contact measurement technology available that is fast and accurate enough for this task.It is this bottleneck that the current proposal aims to remove by developing a terahertz sensor that is capable of performing real-time measurements of the paint quality and layer integrity in real-time using a six-axis robot that can be directly employed in the spray booth of existing manufacturing lines. Our research will make a vital contribution to ensuring the validity of these measurements, which is of paramount importance to deploying this technology in the automotive industry.As part of this project we aim to develop the technology platform that can be used to implement direct quality control feedback loops.