2006 Home of Rolls-Royce - Manufacturing a Rolls-Royce (HD) Paintshop The hand-welded aluminium space frame arrives at Goodwood, pre-treated to ensure corrosion protection and paint adhesion to the metal. The body is thoroughly cleaned to ensure it is spotless before entering the sealed clean room for the painting process. A water-based primer, one colour basecoat and two clear coats are applied partly by robots (the only ones at Goodwood) and partly by hand. Robots are used to maximise paint application and reduce overspray. After each coat the body is oven cured and inspected before being sanded by hand ready for the next coat of paint. A separate paint facility for other parts ensures consistent colour matching. Each body undergoes around five hours of polishing by hand to ensure a perfect gloss finish. Two-tone bodies and horizontal coach lines are offered as paint options. The coach lines, which take three hours to complete, are hand painted by highly skilled craftspeople. Customers can choose from a selection of 18 standard colours, although the full scale of the palette runs to 45,000. Lisa Taylor hand finisher, paint area “Before coming to Goodwood I worked for a company manufacturing car wing mirrors where I had experience of preparing and polishing and after I joined Rolls-Royce I had three months of specialist training. In the Surface Finish Centre, we check the painted body for any slight imperfections, partly by sight, but more by hand . We ring each mark with a Chinagraph pencil, which doesn’t damage the surface, and then gently sand it, before polishing with lambswool until it’s completely smooth and shining. We adjust the lighting to give the best conditions for each particular colour. The biggest challenge is sanding to exactly the right level, to smooth out the mark, but not go too deep. This entails different grades of sandpaper. Sometimes I have just got the polish perfect and I spot another tiny imperfection and have to sand and polish it again. In general, it takes three hours to polish a light colour to get it to my satisfaction, and up to five hours on a dark colour. It’s exciting waiting for the end result. I am very proud when I see it finished, with the beautiful colour combinations of the paint, the wood and the leather. It’s a unique environment for a woman to be working in and I enjoy that. I also enjoy working for the most prestigious car company in the world – people are always impressed when I tell them where I work!”
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 09:42:13 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015