Investigation of the effect of aluminum coated sub-part geometry and coating parameters on coating quality in automotive exterior lighting products

Businesses have to produce quality products and maintain quality product manufacturability in order to ensure customer satisfaction, maintain and increase their market share. Automotive exterior lighting products require aluminum coating on their sub-parts due to the reflection of the light from the light source and the need for an aesthetic appearance. This coating process, which is generally defined as PVD, is the formation of a thin film layer on the surface to be coated by the coating material evaporated with the help of a heater in a vacuum environment. In this study, prisms with different geometric dimensions (surface area and depth) were created and the surface to be coated of an automotive exterior lighting sub-part was simulated. The Taguchi method, which is an improvement method, was used to examine the effect of the determined variables and levels on the coating quality. Prisms are fixed on test plates and coated with aluminum at different planetary rotational speeds. NaOH and aluminum coating thickness tests were applied to the coated plates. As a result of the tests, using the MINITAB program, the levels where the quality characteristics of the product are at their best and their effect on the quality characteristics were examined.