Nippon Paint India is riding high after the inauguration of Nippon Paint X’press - its state-of-the-art car paint and refinish facility in Gurugram earlier this year.
The facility is powered by machine learning colour tools that ensure accurate colour matching during car repair jobs and can accommodate up to 15 cars at a given time. Despite India adopting a lackluster approach towards adoption of advanced paint technology, Nippon Paint has geared up to serve the Indian market and abroad with a range of innovative products. Auto Tech Review met up with Sharad Malhotra, President – Automotive, Commercial and Wood Coatings, Nippon Paint (India) to understand how the company plans to build on its rich experience of 130 years in paint technology for the Indian market.
R&D THRUST
Nippon Paint currently spends around three per cent of its revenues on its R&D activities and comprises a team of 50 people at its Manesar centre. The company has installed various machines for conducting product tests for hardness, viscosity measurement, impact & extension, and gloss metre index to measure the appearance as well as paint strength and durability. In addition, there are hot & cold machines to test drastic temperature changes; weatherometer test machine to build the paint that can sustain performance and extension of up to 6-7 mm flexibility.
Paints are often rated on the basis of their solids content – low solids, medium solids and high solids. As the percentage of solids increase in paints, the solvent level reduces and the product application range rises. Solvent-based paints carry high volatile organic compounds (VOC), which have high vapour pressure that results in low boiling point at room temperature and are cheaper. However, solvent-based paints often causes impediments towards faster completion of work due to involvement of multiple layers in the paint job process – primer, base coat, followed by the baking process, sanding and then applying of the final coat of paint, followed by the heat treatment process again.
This story is from the July 2019 edition of Auto Tech Review.
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This story is from the July 2019 edition of Auto Tech Review.
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