Case studies
30 Mar 2022

Lubrication in automotive paint shops

That shiny red coat of paint on your vehicle does not merely serve to make it more attractive. Vehicles are coated with paint to provide a layer of protection against corrosion and weathering.

The paintshop, where the vehicle gets its protective coating, uses lubricants to avoid the wear and tear of equipment used for painting vehicles. This will lead to extended service intervals of the equipment used, as well as less production scrap. Furthermore, these lubricants need to be compatible with the paint fluids, to ensure proper adherence of the paint to the metal surface.

Transport chains in coating lines need to function well at high temperatures and under harsh conditions. As such, it is important that the lubricants used have high temperature stability and lubricity. An added advantage is that, because of their combined hydrophobic and hydrophilic properties, they will not be washed out by solvents or water. To meet these high requirements, lubricants based on PFAS – in this case per-fluorinated polyether oils (PFPE) and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) greases – are used.

Furthermore, PFAS lubricants are designed for extended life-time or even for-life lubrication of numerous components within a vehicle. Actuators, bearings, steering systems, and powertrains, just to name a few. They help companies prolong the lifetime of their own technical products as well as their production equipment, as such they contribute to the sustainability ambitions set out in the EU Green Deal.

There are no alternative raw materials to PFAS that offer the combined properties of good quality lubricity over a broad temperature range, energy savings through extremely low friction, high oxidative and temperature stability, and  hydrophobic and lipophobic /water- and fat-repellent.