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Gloss Plastic Could Eliminate Auto Painting
customs writes "There is a new plastic out from GE that covers plastic surfaces with a really good sheen. It's more resistant to scratches and random chemicals compared to conventional paint. It's actually a .5 mm polymer called Sollx; the Segway was the first semi-mass-produced product to use it, it has slender two tone fenders. Kinda cool. Auto painting is the industries largest manufacturing expense, and this could be what they're looking for...as soon as the price comes down."
Finally I'll be able to crash into my buddies without having to pay for repainting my car each time I do so! :D
See my blog for my free opinions.
Does using painted sheet metal offer any kind of added structural strength to the car? Or is it so little that a strong frame with a polymer outside would do as well in a crash?
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Haven't you seen the TV commercial with the out-of-work auto painting robots playing cards? It's been airing for weeks.
Would look cool with a window and neon lights.
Ñ'
What are the affects of the sun on this plastic. Because of the construction of most polymers, ultravolet radiation ussually has terrible affects on them. And how do you wax a piece of plastic? Will the whole world suddenly be driving Saturns?
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
The real question, of course, is when this will be available for PC cases.
Well Its nice, but i think its just another way for them to make more money..
I know nothing about CDs or plastic, so correct me if I'm way off base, but "resistant to scratches" sounds like it'd be good for CDs/DVDs?..
At the bottom of the article, it states that the coating doesn't fade:
It never fades. Sunlight's ultraviolet rays trigger a chemical reaction in the Sollx film, forming a protective outer coating that won't decay.
I'd be more concerned about scratches -- how do I touchup a film?
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
add this to the Ideas tha GM has for future fuel cell cars design and it looks like fuel cell cars might be cheaper than cars today!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Has given us Teflon, Kevlar, Lexan and host of other trademarked (but quality) materials. The impact of this tech tends to be below the radar of the average person, but is vastly important in the cost and quality of manufactured goods. The use of other materials such as titanium, aluminum and magnesium in objects traditionally made from steel or die-cast alloy has given us lighter and stronger engines, laptops and spacecraft not to mention medical devices.
Metal dents, and when plastic doesn't bounce, it cracks. Even when the price comes down, it's still going to be fun to replace an entire section of the car for a crack.
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
like some sort of combination fake-vomit/sex toy device. THAT would be gross plastic. Not much protection, though. :)
You are not the customer.
Regardless what the submitter says, the article says that car manufacturers aren't looking at it because plastic is 3x more expensive than galvanized steal.
When plastic comes down in price, then it will be here. The thing that I don't like about this is it seems that it has to be in place during the molding process. This would mean that if you were to ever scratch it, or something along those lines, you'd have to replace the entire piece. Unless they developed a patch kit for it, which seems like the patch would be weaker than the rest of the area because it wasn't present in the mold...
Of course, a plastic fender with this on it would probably be cheap because they have already reduced the cost of plastic below that of steal. The thermochromatic aspect of it would be cool though, but I'd prefer it to be uniform. I wouldn't want the rest of the car to be black and my hood to be red... that would just look weird.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
My father-in-law works for a large plastics company, maybe this means his stock will go up - Maybe he'll pass some along for my wife and I.
I hope that doesn't sound too greedy, does it?
I can dream, its not like my own stock options in my own company are going up...
I got out of graduate school in 1999 and found myself in the market for a new car. I didn't shop around, I thought I knew what I wanted -- a new 2000 Saturn SC2, black. I found that dream car sitting on the lot, and bought it (well, a bank helped me).
So, here I am, 4 years later, the not-so-proud owner of a blackberry (purple in bright sunlight, black at night) Saturn, having learned so much about the downfalls of plastic. I'll never buy another Saturn. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have bought a Saturn in the first place. The sales pitch says this: when you get into an accident, plastic body panels are much easier to replace than metal ones. They don't say that every little ding and scrape you get (ever park next to an SUV that doesn't have enough repsect for drivers of smaller cars that they open their doors until they hit the next car over? Ever find a shopping cart resting against your car?) will leave you with a white mark. In a white car, that may not be bad, but when this car is all newly washed and shiney, it's got ugly white scratches on the sides and rear fender. For some reason, metal cars don't seem to have this problem as much.
Gloss plastic. In practice, does this mean that it'll stick as well as paint does to my plastic Saturn? Or will it have the staying power of paint on metal? I don't care about the press articles on it, I want to know what the field tests say in the hands of real people.
Does anybody know if NetBSD has been ported to this yet?
Resistant to "random" chemicals, eh? Sounds nice, but what about chemicals that the highway department uses?
Stuff that matters. News you've already seen for months in TV commercials.
Then this should have been submitted under the "useless waste of VC by high profile scam artist" department.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Sure, it's scratch-resistant, which would be pretty handy, given the fact that the width of the average parking space hasn't kept pace with the expanding girth of the average car. Seems like my car picks up a ding a day.
Wonder how it holds up to sunlight, though. There are plenty of scalded-looking cars driving around here in Georgia, and many more further south and west. Somehow, my sense is that combination of plastic + UV would be an issue.
What about bodywork? Can it be done? Beyond their dent-resistance threshold, do the panels deform or fail? (Didn't Audi have to set up its own network of trusted body shops before the introduction of the latest aluminum-bodied A6, then offer free flatbed service to new owners, b/c typical body shops didn't have the right equipment and expertise?)
If you had tiny temperature controls on the interior surface of the car, you could change the color of the car at the flick of the switch.
How about heat resistance.. or what happens if someone key's the "plastic".. how repairable is it..
I'll stick with paint.. it's easy to fix, and comes in a wild variety of colours..
plus.. forget plastic coated steel.. lets just get on with using PET body panels.. 100% recyclable and lighter than steel.. rust resistant too..
So, it is more resistant to minor damage. But if it's a film applied to the whole part, what happens if you do damage it?
The nice thing about paint is that you can patch a small area. This sounds like you'd have to replace the entire damaged part.
If so, it has the potential to slightly decrease the original price and really increase the maintenance and repair costs.
I'm not sure that constitutes an improvement.
I still want transparent aluminum for my truck. Then I could carry my pet whale around.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
But dosent "scratch resistant" mean "Incredibly hard to fix once it has been scratched"?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Auto painting is the industries largest manufacturing expense, and this could be what they're looking for...as soon as the price comes down
Sure - as soon as the cost comes down!
The biggest cost in solar power is the cost of collectors, so new material X could be what they're looking for...as soon as the price comes down.
The biggest cost in overclocking is the cost of decent coolers, so liquid nitrogen cooling could be what they're looking for...as soon as the price comes down.
The biggest cost in electric vehicles is the fancy batteries , so fuel cells could be what they're looking for...as soon as the price comes down.
Is it me?
There is a commercial right now put out by GE explaining this new technology, and at first I was pretty excited by it.
But then practicality took over, as it always does, and I began to think about what would happen from even just a slow speed crash. This thing seems to be mainly a one piece mold, and I don't look forward to the costs associated with repair.
www.GamezCore.com For Hardcore PS2 Gamerz : By Hardcore PS2 Gamerz
Corvettes have had fiberglass bodies since the early seventies.
is knowing that I can get a segway in shiny bright purple.
The article mentions a car that is already available which has full plastic parts. More info can be found at the Smart website. I drive one of these, and I have bumped into obstacles while parking several times. Unlike a metal body, the plastic panel just springs back into shape after a bump. With a metal body, it would have been damaged visibly.
Other Smart drivers reported that after a crash, the car had no visible damge while the invisible parts beneath the body panels had been damaged severely, but the robust body panel had been hiding the damage.
I can really recommend these cars. They are the ultimate opposite to an SUV. 2.49 m long (7.5 feet!), 695 kg gross weight, can turn on a dime... wonderful.
Yes, you are right there. -- Another glass of champagne?
What occurs if you want to change the color of your car. Apparently paining it would be a sin if this material is supposed to replace paint. So that means you need to have the entire plastic surface removed and a new one put on?
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...theoretically capable of "thermochromic" effects that change the color with the temperature...
Reminds me of the old hypercolor shirts in approximately the early 90s that changed color when you wore them. I could see this feature appealing to a younger generation.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
So basically, it will be cheap enough to be wonderful as soon as it's not so expensive. Hrrmmm...
GE Plastics claims that the material is also theoretically capable of "thermochromic" effects that change the color with the temperature -- imagine your Lexus molting from red to black as you head from the desert to the mountains.
Uh, doesn't molting mean shedding skin or other outer coating? I can't think of one Lexus owner who wants to imagine their car molting. Giant strips of Lexus skin all over the road! Ewwwwwww!!!
Visit me on the web at Permanent4.com.
Neat! Now i can complement my bad tint job with an equally bubbled paint job.. Yay!
Good idea. Too bad GE did it. It will probably be killed if it doesn't make money in 2 years, then where will the previous buyers be? Or in GE fashion it will develop some other quality features.
"Classic" painting uses a lot of nasty chemicals, but is the production of this new plastic in any way safer?
sic luceat lux
Even though the plastic is 3 times more expensive than galvanized metal, it could still be more economical in the long run. A plastic body could result in a lighter car with better gas mileage (that's cheaper to run).
But I'd also worry about the possibility of a lighter car being less safe.
-- "The reward of suffering is experience." - Aeschylus
When you look at a paintjob on the hood of your transam, like mine, My black paint job, is clear to the look, like looking in a mirror, it reflects the clouds and they roll across my hood as I drive, now imagine if you waxed your car and didn't take the wax off. That is what this film would look like on your car. On a good paintjob you actually do look "through" at least two layers of clear coat, this gives the paint its depth, its shine, I don't want this to go away is all. Beautiful cars are my passion.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
It never fades. Sunlight's ultraviolet rays trigger a chemical reaction in the Sollx film, forming a protective outer coating that won't decay.
So sunlight actually causes a reaction in the paint itself? They claim it won't decay, but still... I'd be a little uneasy about anything that actually reacts chemically to sunlight (including the paint on most cars). I'd prefer something that's inherently resistant, without the need for a chemical reaction. So does this reaction break down after awhile, only to be reactivated again the next time it's exposed to sunlight?
Would you really want a car that "hides the damage" though. I mean, it would be fine for minor dents, etc... but in the case of major damage it could be a safety risk. I remember last time I was in an accident (rear-ended), the insurance company paid for repairs, but I found a lot of hidden problems afterwords that I'm sure were related to the accident but not overly visible, thus not fixed. One of these included damage the metal brackets linking the bumper and tow-bars onto the frame of the car... which resulted in my bumper coming partly off next time I hooked up something to tow, not good.
Do you really want a bunch of damaged metal and loose welds hiding under a "seemingly" clean plastic coating?
Well, not to belabor an obvious point, but you wax plastic with. . . wax. Just as you do paint, wooden furniture, unpainted metal, every kind of flooring material you can think of (including plastics) and a host of other products and materials.
And for the same reasons. It adds a sacrificial layer that erodes instead of the base material. Prevents oxidation.Provides a smoother surface (racing cars are waxed for this reason, the aero drag of a waxed car is measurably lower than an unwaxed one), and as result, entirely coincidentally, gives a glossy sheen that some people find attractive.
People already wax plastic all the time. Hell, I wax my Lexan R/C car bodies. Makes 'em look great.
KFG
As a consumer, would there be any safety considerations during collision with using plastic instead of steel for body panels? I would assume that steel would absorb some limited amount of energy in the process of deformation. Would plastic do as well in these cases or are the energies too big for it to matter anyway?
Just curious...
"We could look better than paint. But right now, we have to look like paint."
If they could make it better than paint then why don't they? If they can make a better product, save cost and make it look better it would give them more of an edge. Especially against an industry that has been part of auto making since the beginning. The more advantages the better.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke
So in that respect, fat people are safe to purchase these cars. And your worries about the car being too light are a bit far-fetched. Sure, other "lite" cars such as Jeeps and those old Samurai pieces of shit were likely to roll but that had more to do with the fact that they were poorly designed and too tall than the weight of the vehicle. As long as you buy a normal compact car that has a low center of gravity, the difference between galvanized metal and plastic will only result in, as Martha Stewart says while I'm pumping her in the asshole, 'good things'.
Now, go do the right thing!
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Volume drives down price.
It would likely be the buy-in of an auto manufacturer that puts the cost of this stuff through the floor!
The1Genius - Littera Scripta Manet
It is the frame and how it crumples that protects you in a crash.
...especially the durable ones.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I suppose it depends upon the vantage point of the people involved in a collision. Which would you rather be hit by: a Ford Explorer or a Honda CRZ?
There are also issues of a smaller car being more maneuverable. My wife once avoided a serious accident by being able to swerve her VW Rabbit very quickly to safely pass a camper shell that blew off from the vehicle in front of her on the freeway.
While larger and heavier vehicles absorb collision stress better than those of less mass, it's likely that a larger proportion of lighter vehicles on the road could reduce injuries by simply reducing the collision loads.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
My father-in-law works for a large plastics company, maybe this means his stock will go up
This is a run-on sentence. Replace the comma with a semicolon or a period.
-
Replace with a period.
Maybe he'll pass some along for my wife and I.
Should read "for my wife and me." You wouldn't say "Maybe he'll pass some along for I" would you?
I hope that doesn't sound too greedy, does it?
Another run-on sentence. Replace the comma with a period. Alternatively, you could rephrase to "That doesn't sound too greedy, does it?"
I can dream, its not like my own stock options in my own company are going up...
Again, this is a run-on sentence. Replace the comma with a period or semicolon. Since you seem to misuse commas very frequently, allow me to refresh your memory of 4th grade English class. A comma is used to join a dependent clause to an independent clause. To join multiple indepdendent clauses, use a semicolon or seperate them into multiple sentences with a period.
Thank you for your attention to this important announcement.
Anyhow, nice metallic cars could also eliminate auto painting. Who needs a painted car anyway? 8-)
Yesterday was the time to do it right. Are we having a REVOLUTION yet?
Most every part in the car contributes to the structural integrity of the vehicle.
Metal door skins and fenders are part of this overall structure. Even the windshield is part of the equation.
Of course if you switched to plastic ( as Saturn has done or the old fieros for example ) then you design around that...
Saw on TV commercials for this very thing recently, but they were touting lexan based panels..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Take a sheet of waxed paper. Grease it up with petroleum jelly. Now spray paint it. Do a good job, adding several coats.
You'll now find that you can simply peel the paint film from the paper backing. You will also now find that paint has no structural integrity whatsoever.
The primary function of painting metal is to prevent oxidation. Rust. It's secondary function is the purely cosmetic one of letting you change the color of the object. Note that the DeLoren, made of stainless steel, was not even available stock with paint on it.
KFG
of the biggest costs once the car is bought is getting small dings etc repaired. would plastic make repairs like this cheaper and will this new coating be cheaper to paint on when your car door is keyed?
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
But it wouldn't really be replacing paint, as the automobile industry has been using powder
for about a decade.I have never seen one of these on the road, and oh boy I am happy. What's it's zero to sixty, and why is it ugly? I took my plastics course in college my junior year, and if I remember something about plastic as aposed to steal, when it's cold out, your screwed. The deformation curve changes drastically with temperatures, up in michigan where I live you could take a rock to the hood and suddenly not have one anymore. Viva la Steel
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
In a white car, that may not be bad, but when this car is all newly washed and shiney, it's got ugly white scratches on the sides and rear fender. For some reason, metal cars don't seem to have this problem as much.
No metal cars just rust instead. Much better...
There's a drawback to any material. Plastic scrapes , steel rusts, aluminum corrodes, etc. Plastic is no exception. The "dent resistant" panels work but you can't hammer them either. They're durable, not indestructible. And it's easy enough to touch them up.
I drive a Saturn and it's a fine vehicle. (1993 SC2) Fun to drive (for its price), good fuel mileage, low insurance, very reliable and it isn't offensive to the eyes either. I don't have the problems with the paint the previous poster described either. When washed it looks pretty good for a car with 120,000 miles on it. I expect it to last me another 60-80,000 miles too. Not much more you can ask for really.
how safe is this plastic for the environment? is it recyclable?
I don't mean to be a smart aleck -- well, maybe a little -- but do want to mention that the ever-increasing complexity of our lives is often good but not always necessary. If I could, I would like to get rid of my car altogether -- I'm no Luddite, but I think a lot of our technological improvements are aimed at correcting the problems introduced by our other technological improvement and distract us from fundamental goals. For example, we have for years been stalled with inefficient and polluting engines whose lifespan has been increased by ingenious inventions of emission control, electronic ignition, and so on, rather than inventing anew with fuel cells and the like (which are fundamentally not a new technology).
With respect to the improvement of paint, it is a wonderful idea that if successful would avoid a lot of waste in paint's first mission, preserving the vulnerable material underneath. But why don't we find ways to get rid of the sheet metal altogether? Saturn is the only one to have taken it really seriously, and I imagine part of that was the advantage of starting as a new company (yes, as a spinoff of a very old one, but you know what I mean -- UAW didn't even hold their new plant to the standard rules, and that was revolutionary!). They haven't beat the problems, but at least they've tried.
Here's a analogy I heard from a professor: Back in the days of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI used to hold up every year a graph of the steady increase in their interdiction of interstate stolen cars. Problem was, interstate theft was increasing even faster. Then Detroit went to ignition steering wheel locks, eliminating the simple way to steal a car by hot wiring. The rate of theft plummeted. Sometimes changing something fundamental is more efficient that layering on additional layer of protection. (I hope the analogy held, but you get the idea.)
One of the many reasons not to be in or near a Corvette when it crashes.
reduced the cost of plastic below that of steal
;)
Can you really reduce anything below the cost of steal?
"We are far too easily pleased." --C.S. Lewis
I like the Segway as much as the next geek, but is it accurate to say that it was mass-produced?
The shareholder is always right.
Pontiac Fieros were plastic-bodied way back in 1984. The problem with plastic car bodies is the fact that they have huge coeffecients of thermal expansion. So when the car gets hot, door gaps and seals tend to distort themselves out of place. Early GM experiments showed that some doors became unclosable, and windows fell from their frames. Different compounds and intelligent design solved many of the problems, though; the Fiero body never rusts and mine looks great after all these years. Mine does not catch on fire, either, since I have a 420-horsepower V-8 in the back instead of the wheezing 4-banger. So plastic is certainly not revolutionary, but applying plastic in very thin sheets is certainly interesting.
This would be great for some of the clear plastic
fetish wear that I make.
Cleara
Hmmm... almost sounds like an ad for GE. You don't suppose?... Nah, couldn't be.
Perhaps they'll put it on the Powerbooks. My 2 year old Ti book is scratched from light-to-moderate use and looks like shit. So much for the strength of titanium.
Every car with a seperate frame and body suffers from this lack of rigidity.
It's not only perfectly possible to make a stressed skin plastic car, but the chassis of every Indy car and Grand Prix car is made entirely of stressed plastics. Because they are stronger, lighter and offer greater protection in a crash then steel,
The primary reason for using steel in the construction of production automobiles is manufacturing cost. Steel can be run down an assembely line in sheet form and *stamped* into complex structural shapes in fractions of a second.
Other materials have traditionally required skilled labor to form and more expesive machinery that takes longer to form a part than stamped steel.
Plus, your steel car rusts out in 10 years and they get to sell you a new one. Never underestimate the power of planned obsolesence. GM invented the overt philosophy.
KFG
From the article: We could look better than paint. But right now, we have to look like paint.
Maybe they've done some consumer studies on this and I'm just not getting it, but wouldn't the fact that it looks better than paint be a good selling point? Or is having the same paint job as the car next to you that important?
"We are far too easily pleased." --C.S. Lewis
The paint-that-isn't technology of course bring Saturn to mind, and I mentioned them in another post. But I don't know much about them since shopping about 5 years ago (problem then was than it was a bit too small).
As an experienced Saturn driver who has perhaps hit something or been hit; or even if not, does the plastic sacrifice much in a collision, say to penetration? I couldn't get a satisfactory answer.
Also, it seemed that the panels were a lot noisier compared to steel, once they finally started welding the later. The noise was particularly dramatic on full-bore acceleration. Steel's rust resistance also improved a great deal over the years -- many of us will remember when rusted-through car doors were commonplace, a problem largely due I'm told to bad drainage.
I complement Saturn for doing a lot of things new, even as a spinoff of a company far more sluggish. I don't think they're there yet, but then they're the Henry Ford of body panels.
Thats all nice and everything but that plastic cracks in cold weather, not sure on the exact tempurature range but they use it on some of the city vehicles here in michigan and they have had lots of problems with it cracking when the temp drops.
Corvettes have had fiberglass bodies since the early seventies.
That's why I hate being in Corvette accidents. I can handle the broken bones, blood loss and internal damage but the damn itching that the fiberglass gives you really sucks.
Trolling is a art,
I've got a 30 year old VW van in my garage. It had been trashed up north and had extensive rusting. No problem, because where the rust was not the material was sound. I replaced the front axle and riveted in a bunch of sheet metal painted it up a little and it's as good looking as it ever was. In fact, I like the patches. Try doing that with a plastic car. Can you even paint over that surface? Doubt it.
Tell me about a car with a composite monocoque frame at half the cost of my steel vehicle and I might listen your speel on plastic pannels.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Second, metal is stronger than plastics, up until you get into carbon fiber or similar carbon or aramid composites, which aren't plastics. They're composites. Even FRP (Fiber-reinforced plastic) which is somewhat common for air dams and such, it's floppy. You could make it hard but then it would be brittle.
Something that people tend to forget about cars is that unibody cars are a monocoque or semi-monocoque design. Most unibody cars are actually half monocoque, with a unibody rear, and then frame rails and underfenders just sort of sitting out in front of the car beyond that. The entire back skin of a unibody car is load-bearing, which is why it's a monocoque design. Stresses from spirited driving are transferred into the roof. This is why convertibles are floppy and require additional reinforcement.
There are some full-monocoque cars, like the older Opel GT. They don't really HAVE a classic frame, they're just built up where the suspension equipment bolts on. Of course the new classic example (since no one seems to know what an Opel GT is any more) is the McLaren F1, which everyone has heard of. That, however, is a carbon fiber full-monocoque design.
So metal is stronger than plastic, necessary in the car's design, and it will in almost every case look different than plastic even after painting. Plastic and metal require different primers, and the texture of the primer on a different material changes the way the car looks when it is painted. It can also be a challenge to get a primer for plastic and a primer for metal which won't interact differently with the paint you lay on top of it.
If you want a prime (oh I kill me) example of this phenomenon, examine a Pontiac Fiero. The Saturns with plastic doors aren't old enough to really see a color change, but of course that is due to fading which this stuff is supposed to not do. The Fieros, however, are painted with different paints depending on whether you're painting plastic or metal. It becomes very noticable on them as they age.
The final and perhaps most compelling reason to use metal is that it has the best failure mode out of all available materials. Plastic tends to shatter when you put enough force into the same part of it all at once. Steel, on the other hand, first work hardens when you flex it, making it stronger in the bent place. If you bend it beyond its elastic limit, anyway. If you continue to stress it it will distress (Crack) and then tear. However, with sheet steel, it mostly causes other areas to deform instead of tearing.
With steel, there is no damage which cannot be repaired. Pieces too badly damaged to straighten can be replaced to or near original specifications by removing a relatively small piece and fabricating a new piece of steel to fill the hole. This is true of any steel part of the car, from the body to the unibody to the frame. Plastic, on the other hand, usually has to be cured into a shape. Plastic bumper covers can be repaired (with some difficulty) but they are not load-bearing. They're just dressing. The only load they ever have to bear is atmospheric.
I should not have to remind you that this tendency to work-harden when pushed past the elastic limit and excellent failure mode is the technology behind "crumple zones" in cars. We know about how the stress is going to be transferred into other parts of the steel. Even cars which DO have plastic parts on the outside have metal parts right under them to deal with crashes. The upgraded version of crumple zone technology is used in NASCAR racing, and it's carbon fiber honeycombs built to fail in a predictable way, just like the crumple zones in a normal car - except of course the cells are smaller and more predictable. The bumpers are also upwards of $2000, which makes them impractical for street use.
Steel is cheap and good and can be easily repaired out in the real world. Plastics may make it possible, but they also possibly make repairs a big pain in the ass. You have to consider the difficulty of repair as well as initial construction.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ummm...I would be willing to bet you do not own a car that was brush painted. And no paint on your car is not like brush on plastic. If you ever see a GM paint line you'll understand. They spray on 2 layers of heavy paint then ussually 2 layers of clear coating on top of this, the clear coating is an acrylic, very different than the chemical makeup of this plastic, the paint is more akin to a glue than to a plastic, for instance if your clear coat starts to go south, try buffing it with a high speed buffer, you'll often notice the the heat will actually meld the clear coat over scratches and it will be nice and shiny again.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
I admitted it was offtopic but I sure as hell wasn't going to leave important news like this to the fickle hand of the story submission cue.
Does this mean I can get a car to match my iBook?
And, if so, can I do this with it?
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
I have a 1997 SL2 and it's just as quiet as the other small cars we drove around the time we bought it.
:(
Here's some collision photos, though they're higher impact then you're referring to, I think. For small impacts the panels pop right back, though you can scratch the paint.
Unfortunately, Saturn is integrating themselves more and more with GM. There's even talk of a non-polymer panel vehicle in a couple years.
I don't think the Saturn S-series noise issue (and you're right, they're loud during acceleration) has anything to do with body panels - they just have a loud engine and limited acoustical damping for it.
My wife's '96 started purple and still is, other than some white scuff marks on the bumpers.
Saturn isn't really a separate company. Saturn Corporation is really a sales unit. The actual *design* and *production* of Saturn vehicles is done by General Motors North American Vehicle Operations. Saturns are produced in a separate plant in Springhill, TN., yes, but the employees of that plant don't work for Saturn, they work for GM. The vehicle development work (that is the design and engineering) is done primarily at GM's Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. (I should know, I used to work there ;) ).
My journal has hot
Auto painting is the industries largest manufacturing expense, and this could be what they're looking for...as soon as the price comes down."
I couldn't have written something as wonderfully confused as this even if I had eaten a hash brownie and spent an hour on a sit 'n' spin.
goats.com: better than
Or any other cold environment where they use salt on the roads? There are two concerns I have, salt and the cold. Will this new plastic paint be more resistant to the salt? If so then that would be good. But what about when the steel underneath starts to rust? With standard paint you get the bubbling - will this push off the plastic coating exposing the metal underneath for even more rust? The other problem is the extreme cold. In warm weather plastic panels are nice, they are dent resistant and bounce back. In the really cold parts of the year they crack and shatter however. I could see this new paint cracking off in after a minor accident in the cold.
Well, if 1953 is your idea of the early seventies, sure. So far as I know, Corvettes have always been plastic.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Please, don't feed the trolls, can't you read the sign?
You're not 93427. You're 5,250,560.
You must be new here, not knowing your own number and all.
Not to be a luddite, but I rather enjoy being encased in a steel cage when lightning hits my car.
OK, it doesn't happen every week, but still...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The whole reason why the auto industry hasn't hopped on the plastic panel bandwagon is because plastic has a higher coefficient of thermal expansion. If you look closely at a Saturn, you'll notice body panel gaps of almost a quarter inch! Compare this to something like the new Accord, which has body panel gaps almost too small to notice. Plastic requires auto makers to make too many styling compromises. Until they fix the expansion problem, they'll just keep on using steel..
Uh... Plastic is made out of petroleum (i.e. oil). What happened to reducing our dependence on foreign oil.
Make sure it's a 1988, though. It took GM until then to get it right, then they quit making it. Mmmm...Engine Fires.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Is this why the Segway is so darned expensive?
prefer our cars to be made of metal.
//Phizzy
www.volvocars.com
"Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing," -- Former CIA chief James Woolsey, referring to Echelon
I can't believe this actually made it on Slashdot, there's already a COMMERCIAL for this on TV, it's narrated by Alec Baldwin and he talks all about it and then at the end tells you GE is cool.
I can see it now, soon there's going to be a slashdot article "NEW AXE BODY SPRAY WILL REVOLUTIONIZE SMELL SCIENCE!" and "NEW SPRAY AND SWEEP SWIFFER SWEEPER ADVANCES STATIC ATTRACTIVE DUST SCIENCE!
As an employee of an automotive supplier in Detroit, I'm interested in this issue, and your opinion that the noise is not related to the exterior body panels. It has long been an engineering problem for the interior plastic-molded panels to come loose after appreciable (or not so) mileage vibration. Where I work, we even have a whole department of "Squeak and Rattle" engineers. My car has already developed this problem at 39,000 miles, and I'd be suprised if the '96 Saturn you mentioned wasn't currently suffering in a similar manner.
It seems to me the exterior plastic would loosen and vibrate sooner than the interior moldings. My company's proposed solution for the interior is to attempt eliminating as many seams as possible, making the panels very large and continuous. Obviously, with doors, windows, and puppies on the outsides of cars, a continuously connected body would be impossible. I'm curious to hear what the high-mileage Saturn owners have to say (on this issue only, please).
hi, I like pancakes -.-- -.-- --..
why don't you submit a story about how much you suck?
After hunting for more information on the GE Plastics website, I discovered an area that actually allowed me to talk to a GE Specialist about plastics.
/ library/literature/film/polyestercarbonate/weather able/sollx/slxf200?html=/sp/content/library/litera ture/alit126/css/alit126.htm&pdf=/sp/content/libra ry/pdfs/alit126.pdf
The person I talked to was kind enough to link me to this following document:
http://www.gestructuredproducts.com/sp1/gesp_amer
Free registration required.
-Michael J. Lu
"The little secret that haunts Corporate America...a techonology that won't go away."
one word: corvette.
There doesn't seem to be any shortage of those on the roads, and this picture is an example of what happens when you bump into someone while driving your big fiberglass manhood-enhancer.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
You're right- Optical Camouflage doesn't hold a candle to this story. Here's another linky.
2003-02-05 21:06:34 Optical Camouflage a Reality(articles,tech) (rejected)
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The colored plastic bumper covers on our conventional Mazda Protege get black scuff marks. The thing to do is to pick a color similar to the default plastic. :) (Ours is dark blue, works well.)
Go ahead. I double dare you.
You can't do it. So called "carbon fiber" is a *composite* of carbon fibers and plastic. The plastic gives the form and the fibers add rigidity, taking advantage of the best attributes of both.
Such plastic plus fiber composites have been with us for ages. The WW1 Albatross fighter plane fuselage was made from composite materials, as was the PT boat, although must people don't recognize it as such.
That's right. *Plywood*, chip board and fiberboard are manufactured, actually high tech, plastic composite material using wood fibers instead of glass or graphite.
Your views on plastic as a throw away item is biased by the fact that plastics are the materials used to make disposable items. This has nothing to do with the plastic itself. What is one of the primary problems with this? Plastics don't degrade and build up in the land dumps. Metal does. Please note from the article that this plastic they have developed in *not* subject to degradation from uv light.
In any case, you can do exactly the same thing with a production plastic car to protect it from uv radiation as they do for GP cars.
Paint 'em.
There. Problem solved.
Trust me, I can make you a plastic car that will last for eons. Just like that Dixie cup you threw away last week.
KFG
I have a '97 SL2. When someone backed in to the side of it at about 5mph, they did some serious damage ($3500), which included replacing the two door panels. They weren't damaged much, but they weren't patchable, either.
Later the same year my car was broken in to - they bent the driver's door (someone's out to get my doors, heh) and they had to replace that door panel, too.
The suckiest part was how long it took them to do this - it took 2-3 weeks to get the door panels in stock.
But really, isn't the issue one of price/performance on the technology curve for steel lower than the price/performance on the technology curve for plastic?
We only really want to switch to plastic when one of three things changes:
Price goes way down
Performance goes way up
Technology improves and price/performance jumps onto an entirely new curve.
So when we can manufacture better frames, analagous to the way how skyscrapers came into existence because load bearing stone was replaced with steel, improvements in technology can occur that replace the load bearing steel shell with an internal load bearing skeleton, relegating the skin to window dressing (like skyscrapers or human beings).
Or when plastics become advanced enough that they are superior to steel as a load bearing structure (yeah, tough to imagine, but that's what imagination is for, no?)
Or when manufacturing for advanced plastics becomes low enough that it's more advantageous to use plastics for the shell and use a reinforced steel inner body for the load (without changes in steel technology)...
It's happened before: Buildings used to be made of stone, with the stone acting as a load bearing as well as exterior material. Then we got concrete to replace that, allowing us to build higher and thinner. Then we shifted the load bearing capacity to interior steel members, allowing us to use glass thin outer shells and to build ever higher into the skyscraper range.
So I assume it will happen in cars. Something revolutionary will occur in steel tech, which will be marginally more expensive than traditional steel, but because you'll need less of it for the same function, you get advantages when you make a airier steel frame underbody, akin to a skeletal system, with plastic or composite shell sitting atop it for aesthetic and weight reduction reasons. Don't forget that fuel efficiency and power output are related to weight, too, and that people who want more performance or more fuel efficiency want lighter cars.
So cars will continue to get lighter, and plastics and other technologies will aid that, because as weight goes down, manufacturing goes down (just less stuff in general), power goes up, fuel efficiency goes up, and margin goes up, because you still charge the same but you pay less in materials.
GPL Deconstructed
That would be cool, if you could flip a switch and change the color of your car.
I just love running shopping carts into the side of the car to the great horror of my wife, just to demostrate how it can't be dented.
We need Macintosh power. I *am* Macintosh power!
If they want to get into the auto industry, there is a pretty easy way.
Partner with a with a kit-built hot rod company who manufactures 'glass bodies. If it doesn't work with fiberglass, then help work out a solution that would work. If the stuff is as good as the article says it will gain acceptance and will become desired. If they can replicate candy colors, if they can put flames and other designs in the film (the article says logos can be in the film, so why not?) this technology will come into demand and also have some real-world testing. Car shows are also a great way to advertise it.
If they can't lower the price to make it feasable, stick with some limited show vehicles, or work with people like Boyd Coddington to create some low-run premium models.
One thing to keep in mind is that plastic cars would be much lighter in weight than steel ones. This has two big advantages: firstly, fuel consumption would be much lower. Now that doesn't seem to be much of an issue in George W's vision of America but in the rest of the world it's a serious concern. (You'd also get better acceleration for the same engine power)
Second, because advanced plastics are both lighter and stronger than steel, if all cars were made of plastic the roads would be a much safer place (because the energy released in impact is proportional to the mass of the cars involved, plus lighter cars can stop more quickly). Of course, if a plastic car hit a steel car, then the plastic car would probably come off worse -- but then these days anyone not driving an SUV is likely to die in an accident ('cos they're most likely to hit an out-of-control SUV rolling over after taking a corner too fast...)
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
The only issue with Sollx is that it seems to make cars hard to steal. While that would generally be a good thing, it will ruin future releases of Grand Theft Auto.
"Quick, take this car down to the, um, place and have it dipped in Sollx."
does your '39 have? And how many did GM sell last year?
The fact that you have preserved your Pontiac has nothing to do with GM adopting an overt philosophy to encourage people to repurchase.
There are always a few people as wise as yourself in these matters, but they are always in the minority, which is all GM needs to make a killing.
KFG
a custom color or change your mind after you buy the thing, thru and thru color means you are stuck with it for the life of the car.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
nt
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I know most house paints (at least water based) are essentially plastic in a water suspension (or whatever the technical term is). So what's the difference here? That it comes as a pre-made film rather than a liquid?
If makes you feel any better, when our parked '96 Mazda Protege was low-speed sideswiped by a drunk going *the wrong way* on a 2-way street, the front and back door panels were ruined but internally everything worked, even the windows. It was drivable. $3000. 3 week wait (not clear why). I think our real enemy is body shops, regardless of whatever material they work in, and worse the manufacturers who sell replacement parts for astronomical prices.
Your cost was very high for a domestic car. We had a $200 deductible, that's the only nice thing I can say.
Maybe elastic or clay-like cars? Cars that bounce like beach balls?
Just today, faced withthe task of finally wet-papering away a load of rust, i thought, why the fsk dont they have the shell makde out of super light weight flimsy plastics that look good, and don't scratch or rust, and have the sturdy car shell underneath that... since the cars body work does little to help you ina crash, only hinder rescue attempts!! and here it is, slashdotted, well off to get the polycarbonwhatsit doodah paste to fill another hole in my little muscle car.
Most high production fiberglass parts are manufactured by blowing the resin and glass mixture onto a mold. The color is typically applied either as a mixture in the resin or by coating the mold prior to applying the resin and glass. I believe all current automotive applications for fiberglass are painted though--mostly because of the non-glossy finish. It's all about picking the right material for the application.
Kevlar uses aramid fibers in place of the glass, but works along the same theory.
IANAEE, but if I remember my studies, a plastic-based car would provide much less or no protection from lightning. A car with a metal roof and sides attracts the lightning and creates an protective shell for passengers, as long as they are not directly touching any conductive material. Plastic cars provide no such insulation, and the occupents are as exposed as if they were just standing on the ground. I believe people have studied this exact phenomenon, and I encourage anybody who has more knowledge to please post replies.
Of course, the article seemed to be saying that the plastic would simply be a coating over the metal frame, like paint, and might not have the consequence described above.
An informal poll: Who would buy a car with ANY plastic body panels - regardless of "sheen". If they were dull or otherwise? The tradeoff? The resulting decrease in weight of the car by 500lbs of sheet metal will save you $X(?) per year on gas, the planet Ytonnes of emissions etc etc etc.
I could care LESS about how much 'sheen' the panels have. Instead of pulling out of Kyoto, maybe the emissions targets could have been reached (in part) by the increased fuel savings/decreased resourecs into the product itself/decrease cost of recycling (shred/ship vs ship(heavy)&melt)...
Yes, of course I do. But let's face it -- "resin" is a polite for "plastic", and "fiberglass" is, in fact, plastic reinforced with glass. (Well, strictly speaking, fiberglass is the glass part, so calling the Corvette "fiberglass" is like calling a reinforced concrete wall "rebar")
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
CNN.com has an article on what I think is one of the coolest things ever.
b le .ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/02/07/japan.invisi
(yeah, I tried to share it with you all but everything I ever post get's (rejected). No matter that is is more on topic to this site or the times than half the crap that gets posted.
But this too me is revolutionary....
The potential of this ranges from military applications (camaflauge clothes and vehicles) to commercial (clothes that you can change the color and style of instantly). Link includes a picture...
And yeah, sadly, most of you wont see this cause it'll be mod-down because I am griping about a post submission rejection. But frankly, I am tired of it. I've submitted several interesting articles. But it seems that unless you've got some status...expect to be rejected. How the above can not be thought of as News for Nerds, or a Stuff that Matters. Frankly, I'd put the technology there in the top 20 list of really cool inventions of the the 21st century!
I submitted this story to /. a week ago, and it was rejected. "Kinda cool." Right. Kinda eat me, slashdot.
"It could revolutionise optical instruments because it reflects 10 to 20 times less light than the black paint currently used to reduce unwanted reflections."
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
As someone who works for GE, I've heard a lot of talk about it, and if you check out our big "PR" site, www.imaginationatwork.com you'll see the marketing behind Lexan. For specifics, including requesting a free sample of the SOLLX or to see a more detailed description and how SOLLX DIFFERS from regular LEXAN film - used on Saturns (we make that too), visit: http://www.gestructuredproducts.com/sp1/gesp_amer/ industry/product.jsp?gradeCLID=2325
for everyone involved in an collision. Crumple zones are all about energy dissapation. Less kinetic energy means less mangling of your car (and you).
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Most people's problem with patents isn't the idea of paying to use Teflon, it's paying to use "Music, transfered over an electronic network" or letting companies patent discovered genes, instead of patenting the use of that gene, for a specific task.
The real problem is that patents used to be on a very specific process. A hundred people could patent ways of sending music over a network and not conflict. Now, they're granting patents on the idea of sending the music over a network. You can't just come up with an easier way to it.
Patents also don't allow for independent discovery. Let's say I develop a process to, paint plastic for instance, and am slowly developing it. If you were doing the same thing and you patent it, I can't point to my years of research, notes, and prototypes, as proof that I didn't use your patent. If I want to use the method I developed, I'd have to pay you. Like the story of Alexander Bell and the telephone, supposedly beating Elisha Gray to the patent office, and Antonio Meucci supposedly had invented it twenty years earlier but was unable to commercialize it properly for various reasons.
I feel patents should have to 1) be useful, and 2) be used, for you to have to pay royalties. The mere idea of sending music over a network is useless, ideas are a dime a dozen. And the telephone patent. Why should Elisha or Antonio have to pay Bell when they didn't get anything for his patent?
Not all problems with patents are from people who simply don't want to pay for what they use.
The plastic panels for the whole car can be replaced with an entirely different colour for £500, around $750. So, should you have the cash and also be a fashio victim you can make it look like whatever you like, as often as you like.
0 -> 60 is irrelevant, it's a city car. Cold weather has no more effect on the car than any other vehicle.
It is group 2 insurance, the petrol version does 60mpg[1] and the Diesel version does 85mpg, so it is very very cheap to run in a country where insurance and fuel prices are sky rocketing.
[1] UK gallons.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
So this looks great and all but:
:)
Then paint company's loose money, fender shops go under, and suddenly there are lobbist in congress with a environment report from Dr. DoBad to prove to congress why we need to ban this great technogy from use on cars. Ahhh politic's at there best!
with a somewhat rough paint in order to reduce drag. This technique, however, works better with bicycles and road cars than with racing cars.
A somewhat rough surface only works to reduce drag in certain limited cases and at limited speeds. The reduced drag is accomplished by the rough surface actually serving to delay seperation of the airflow boundry layer from the surface it is flowing over. When seperation occurs turbulence, and hence drag, results.
At high speeds and over surfaces inately designed to maintain the boundry layer a smooth surface always has less turbulence, and thus less drag. In fact, in such surfaces a rough finish actually serves to force the airflow *off* the surface.
Which is why NASCAR stockers are waxed and polished, not roughed up.
KFG
So are we looking for a way for the US to stay dependant on foriegn oil after we switch to hydrogen powered cars?
Just wondering...
I have a 1996 SW2, it's gold, nice very good on insurance, good mileage as well. It costs me $480/yr cdn. for insurance.
No problems with the paint either, my friend accidently scratched my drivers door panel with his car door a couple of years back. The trick to get the scratch out is to take some "polishing compound" from back in the day water it down really well and spend an hour rubbing it out. If it's deep, go and buy a bottle of touch up and rebuild it layer by layer. Very easy. I did have to get the entire drivers side repainted because some punks spray painted it, the repair shop did a very impressive job matching the color, it was $1,200 for it, but the spray paint had eaten into the clear coat and into the paint. Atleast I didn't pay for the repair.
Dark color's and bright color's always fade very fast in bright sunlight. They have since the 1930's, and it's common knowledge? Maybe not...I guess having been an apprenticed bodyman at one point gives me some insight in this.
From a repair point, the panels require a special paint, back when the panels were new(Pontiac Transports '90ish) the paint was 4x-7x the cost of the older stuff. Same with the clear coat. Now it's twice a durable, and the same price.
Anyway my SW2 has 138,000 miles on it now, it still gets great mileage, and if you properly maintain the car it will last you for along time. It wasn't that many years(10-20 maybe) ago that someone would call you a liar if you said your car had 100,000 miles on it.
My buddies '95 SW1 has 380,000 miles on it. The damned thing is just starting to show engine wear. A good solid car.
I wouldn't mind trying one of the new ION's tho.
Om, nomnomnom...
The Fiero used different paint on the parts of the body that would be most likely to be subjected to impact, ie. the bumpers. The rest of the body was painted with normal automotive paint. The difference in the bumper paint is that it has an additive to make it less likely to crack when the panel is flexed. This is the same type of paint system used on other GM cars of the time, including cars which had mostly metal bodies and plastic covered bumpers like the Camaro/Firebird, the A-body cars (Cutlass Ciera/Pontiac 6000/etc), and so on. Other than some small trim pieces, there are no plastic exterior panels on the Fiero.
The flex additive is what makes the bumper paint fade more rapidly.
It is interesting to note that a lot of these cars, even back in the early 1980's had plastic honeycomb parts serving as impact absorbing structures right under the flexible plastic bumper covers, for instance the '82-'92 Camaro had a plastic rear bumper beam.
Putting moderation advice in your
Random != surprising, unusual or varied.
This like totally random guy came up to me and shit
No! You just didn't expect it.
Then, in the early 80's, a company called Delorean created some fine gull-wing cars with stainless steel bodies. Yeah, they get fingerprints, but they still look really damn good after 20 years. And no, they're not heavy -- 2700 pounds on a full tank of gas. That's probably less weight than your 4-cylinder.
Yes, there are lots of options available to the auto manufacturers. But most likely, things won't change very much. Non-painted automobiles have come and gone, but painted ones have always been around. Additionally, really cool features don't come from really old companies. The risk that Mr. Executive might have a few less bucks in his pocket at the end of the year just don't justify the initial investment.
...just my 2 gil.
The Pontiac Fiero (1980s car?) had no paint, and used plastic body panels pinned to the frame. The frame alone provided all structural support (body panels did not contribute to structural integrity).
The plastic was mono-colored all the way through (no laminated exterior layer). So theoretically, "chips" would not show. The panels were flexible and dent resistant. The panels were designed to be indivudally removed/replaced in cases of extreme damage. They were also much lighter than steel.
Why didn't GM stick with this? Did the plastic glaze, or age badly?
Stainless Steel.
It is a huge scam that cars are painted at all.
The plastic bumper covers with matching paint are also a huge scam to drive up repair costs.
SS is extremely tough and corrosion resistant.
Of course, SS cars would have an enormous impact on the economy as body shops, insurance companies, car companies, etc are all impacted.
What is new about plastic paints? Absolutely nothing! Can I buy a car today that has plastic panels with shiny paint?
Yes. There is the Saturn which has had plastic body panels for years and if you look at them you will see that they do indeed shine.
What else? Many bumper parts have been flexible plasic and of course had plastic paint on them that was also flexible. The ugly '73 Ford Mustang for example (Those of us with '69 Mach 1 projects are funny about the Mustangs after '70).
Any older than that? Why yes. How about the Corvette. Sometimes called plastic fantastic by its adherents (I'm not one, but anything without wings is just ground transportation to me). The Corvette used FRP (Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic since the first one in the fiftys. Not flexible panels but certainly plastic and usually "Very Shiny".
Any other plastic paints. Well it turns out nearly all automotive paints have been plastic paints for many years.
For example, all paints used on all cars today are plastic bases. Either an acrylic of urethane base.
Back in the late '70s I painted some cars. I used Dupont Centari (a Acrylic Enamel), various Acrylic Laquers, and even Dupont Imron Polyurethane (Dangerous stuff with an isocyanide catalyst).
It even goes back much further than that. In the 20's or 30's someone spilled toluine solvent on some film. Being a real slob they did not clean it up. Later when they returned they found that the solvent had evaporated and left a very shiny coating on the surface where the film had desolved. This discovery was the basis of "modern" automotive plastic paints.
Ok, because he claims he went to Case Western, and is finishing up at Northwestern, I am a student at Cornell, does that mean that my opinion is any less valid. and he just pulled a completely pointless metaphor out of his ass about two metals. My point was that this type of plastic is nothing like paint, latex or acrylic, and he just went on to prove my point while showing how two materials, although both metals, behave entirely differently. So his original post of, "Modern paint is basically plastic" was pointless and carried no informative value.
and if we're playing old distributions... whatever happened to Yggdrasil? :)
\\swing: everybody who tried to pronounce it got their tongue in a knot and choked
-- #Debian
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