Car manufacturers are forever placing greater demands on the quality and environmental credentials of paint processes for the plastic components used in their vehicle interiors. To meet these requirements, one of the leading global car suppliers pretreats millions of switches and controls with atmospheric-pressure plasma each year.
The painted plastic switches on a dashboard are touched thousands of times during the life of a car; sometimes gently, sometimes roughly, sometimes with clean fingers, and sometimes with dirty ones. But no matter how they are treated, the paint must stay intact. And furthermore, even after years of use, they should look and feel just the same. BMW, for example, requires the paint used for rotary switches to be sufficiently wear-resistant to withstand being turned through 360° no less than 60,000 times before the paint shows any signs of damage. Standard pushbutton switches, such as CD or climate controls, must even be able to withstand at least 100,000 touches. This corresponds to an assumed load over a 17-year period – regarded by the Munich-based car manufacturer as the total life cycle of the vehicle. Other premium brands have similar specifications, which means, by analogy, that the supplier must offer virtually the same high standard of quality to all its customers.