Ion guns improve the dashboard view
A
Meech International product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Feb 11, 2003
Plastic lenses used in the manufacture of car instrument clusters were causing an electrostatic problem for Visteon until the company adopted ionising air guns for cleaning.
Visteon, the second largest automotive supplier in the world, employs over 600 staff at its Enfield plant where components, including those for the prestigious Jaguar marque, are manufactured and assembled.
Visteon's electronics sector supplies approximately half a million instrument clusters from Enfield to Jaguar each year and, naturally, premium quality is essential as nothing less is acceptable to luxury car purchasers.
Furthermore, being positioned directly and permanently in the driver's line of sight, the instrument cluster has to be functionally and aesthetically perfect.
The clusters are composed of sealed units, topped by clear plastic lenses, which fit into the dashboard.
During the production and transportation process, the plastic lenses, which are manufactured on-site by Visteon, become statically charged.
This charge attracts dust particles, which, if not removed prior to the units being sealed, become trapped on the inside face of the lens.
Visteon's original solution to this problem was to spray the inside face of the lens with a chemical antistatic solution, but this caused problems because the spray could produce aesthetically unacceptable evaporation spots on the inner faces of the lenses.
Visteon was already using Meech static elimination products in another part of the plant and it was suggested that, instead of spraying the lenses, they should be blown clean using ionising air guns, and this suggestion has been successfully implemented in the instrument cluster assembly area since September 2002.
The guns are used at two stages in the process; first, when the batches of lenses arrive in the assembly room to remove the static and therefore avoid any dust cling, and secondly, just prior to the welding when the instruments are blown clean before being finally sealed.
Visteon now has approximately 20 Meech 251 ion gun systems installed on its instrument assembly benches and has also initiated a preventive maintenance program on the guns, ensuring that they are kept in tip-top working order at all times.
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