Body in White Process
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dnsjet1Body in White Process
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dnsjet1Body in White Process
Therefore the car body includes: a chassis consisting of front and rear frames connected by a
central platform; an upperbody that is created directly on the underbody, on which inner
and outer parts of the sides are joined, it is very linked to the style and performance of the
specific model; the closures are assembled in the phase defined as "shoeing", to complete
the body assembly.
The bottleneck can be represented by the construction of the upperbody on the underbody,
starting from the welding of the sides. At this stage, several robots work in parallel in the
station called “Robogate”.
Spot or continuous welding and riveting processes perform the mechanical connections, but
other processes such as laser cutting and braze welding can also be used in the body shop.
The technologies used in the body shop to join the components to obtain the sub-groups
can be multiple, the main ones are schematized below.
The welding processes, the application of rivets and coating of glue can be performed
automatically, semi-automatically or manually, therefore they present a wide margin of
application of the “low volume approach”, in terms of the possibility of reducing investments
where it is possible.
It is clear that process constrains force a higher level of automation in some cases, especially
as regards the more recent technologies, such as laser welding and FRW.
Welding is a mechanical joining process based on the fusion of the materials, different
methods can be applied.
The welding processes schematized below are characterized by the methodology of
achieving the fusion, in particular:
MIG / TIG are electric arc welding, the creation of the welding seam is protected by inert
gases (Argon or Helium) in both cases, in order to prevent corrosive phenomena that would
cause a poor quality of the joint; the two processes are different because TIG uses a non-
consumable tungsten electrode;
Spot welding exploits the major resistance to the flow of electric current in the area of
separation between the components to be joined; in fact, in that zone the conductivity is
much lower than that there is into the material of which the two parts are constituted, this
resistance converts the electric energy into heat, which leads to the local fusion of the
materials. The car body contains hundreds of welding points obtained through this
technology.
Laser welding is a technology that allows joining the components through the use of an
energy beam generated by a laser source. The beam involves high energy levels focused in
the spot diameter capable of vaporizing the materials almost instantly; this process ensures
to obtain continuous welding with very low cycle times.
Friction Stir Welding (FSW) uses a shaped pin with a shoulder, in order to increase the
contact surface and keep the molten material underneath to form the welding seam, this
tool rotates to produce heat by exploiting friction effect and mixing the material of the two
parts.
Among the joining technologies that do not provide for the fusion of material there is the
application of adhesive; it presents deeply different characteristics from the other kinds of
joints:
No holes and other discontinuities in the components, with the consequent absence of
stress concentrations;
Pre-treatment necessary in order to increase the surface roughness in the joint area;
Bonding is resistant to shear stress but not very resistant to normal actions.
