Page 22 - Australasian Paint & Panel Magazine Jan-Feb 21

Industry Insights
22
PAINT&PANEL
JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021
WWW.PAINTANDPANEL.COM.AU
ABOVE: Sensory overload – S Class now has rear passenger airbag.
LEFT: So many manufacturers are mixing it up when it comes to materials used in body construction.
Genesis has made a point of emphasis- ing pigments in their paints, an example being interference pigments (specialised pearlescent pigments that yield distinctive optical effects) being placed in Lima Red.
Eye-catching? Sure. A far higher de- gree of cost for the consumer and diffi- culty to apply for a painter when it comes to a respray? Absolutely.
Although it has yet to be rolled out for more popular models, the stunning Structural Blue paintwork found on the Lexus LC Convertible is another example of a colour that looks amazing - it con- tains 300 billion nano-structure pigment flakes that are applied over 12 production steps - but would present enormous is- sues if it were used for mass production.
Luckily, paint companies are aware of the challenges for painters and have made a concerted effort to train people.
As a consumer it’s easy to buy a car with a nice paint job on it that captures attention, but sometimes the techniques of applying those eye-catching paints are hard to replicate in a body shop.
“The technology in the refinishing space is going through the roof - hydro- phobic paints that water continually washes off, UV primers that cure in 90 seconds to two minutes. It’s a different world altogether,” says Trewin.
ADVANCED DRIVER- ASSISTANCE SYSTEMS (ADAS)
A combination of concerning road traffic deaths - around 1.35 million a year, ac- cording to the World Health Organisation - and the advancement of safety technol- ogy have seen tech like autonomous emergency braking, collision-avoidance
systems, lane-departure warning, blind- spot detection and pedestrian crash-miti- gation systems become increasingly standard fitments on modern cars.
Vehicles with cameras and radars that can see the road ahead would’ve sound- ed sci-fi not long ago, but now they’re a reality that repairers must deal with.
In terms of groundbreaking ADAS, where the Mercedes-Benz S-class leads, everyone else tends to follow.
The 2021 model keeps up the tradition of breaking new ground in terms of safe- ty features, most notably with the ability to lift three-inches from the road if a side-impact collision is imminent (the Audi A8 boasts the same tech, but only lifts on the side about to be hit).
The new S-class also adds rear-seat air- bags to protect passengers in the back.
Once only strictly found on these kinds of high-end German cars, ADAS technol- ogy is creeping into mainstream models, but it isn’t becoming any less tricky to fix. Some sensors won’t work properly unless special adhesives are used, and damaged sensors require calibration.
“It’s a challenge because every brand and vehicle has its unique systems,” Trewin says. “There are arguments for and against specialising in a particular brand or brands. How do you tool up and train for all of them? Some manufacturers suggest that only their dealers look after the cars because they have the tooling and training to do so.”
Moving forward, Trewin predicts a technician of the future won’t just be an old school spray painter or panel beater, you’ll also have someone who acts as the IT department for the car.
“There will be these ADAS experts who just do the calibration, the scan- ning, things of that nature, and they may not know anything about the body,” he says. “They will be these specialised IT people saying, ‘I know these systems, I know how they work.’”
I-CAR in the US is already developing an ADAS technician training pathway to deal with the issue.
“If you’ve got a guy who looks at the body and is possibly dealing with these mixed materials, do you throw the ADAS at him too? It’s a big task,” he adds.
“If the body work doesn’t get done prop- erly, none of those fancy computer sys- tems will work, so everyone is depend- ent on each other.”