I've had several PM's about post #10 in the (now locked) long thread about D80, special paint cars, etc. that eventually deteriorated into a catfight; the post said, in part,

<< Anyways he said the specail paint cars did not have a paint code and some had the dashes and some didnt , gm built the special paint cars and then set them aside untill the end of the year so gm didnt have to keep switching out the paint and reseting the robots and computers (makes since being they only painted a couple of each color ordered) not enough for production. >>

Just to clarify, bodies (or cars) that got special paint didn't get "set aside" for months before being painted, the cowl tags were produced the day before the car was built, not four months in advance, and there were no robots of any kind at Norwood in 1969.

:beers:

Thanks JohnZ for the clarification:yes:.I thought the same thing about the "robots".

and there were no robots of any kind at Norwood in 1969.:beers:

Oh contrare John.... there were robots you just didn't know it.... they blended in but they were always there. Just look to the left of these Norwood factory workers , it looks Innocent enough but just barley in the frame to the left you can see one.......I bet he has a spray gun in his other hand



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/ChevyThunder/C32.jpg

The rest of the robots in the back room at Norwood waiting to work the night shift...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/ChevyThunder/LineUp.jpg

Yes, John, that is a fact. It was on a need to know basis and you did not need to know. That girl on the far right was also a robot. Only a few of us at the GM Robot Building plant knew about her. Because the one one the left was not a car, you guys never noticed it.

Oh the pain...the pain!

We all get a little LOST IN SPACE now and then!:thumbsup:

John Z,

When the cars came down the line were they made in batches at all according to color or color did not matter? And if or whatever the process (as color goes) was did Fisher or GM dictate it?

What about computers in the plant? There were some around in the 60's but they were not very useful yet. The personal computer was not invented until the early 70's.

John can give a better answer but yes they had computers at GM in the 1960s and the cars were batched by color as the paint equipment can only handle so many colors at a time

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John Z,

When the cars came down the line were they made in batches at all according to color or color did not matter? And if or whatever the process (as color goes) was did Fisher or GM dictate it?

"Batch painting by color" was practiced only occasionally, and the reason was to reduce the cost of thinner used to clean all the spray guns between colors; the pneumatically-driven overhead and side guns reciprocated cross-car and up-down on trolleys, and were fed from manifolds on one side of the booth. Each booth had about 20 paint circulating systems fed from the main Paint Mix Room - usually 14-16 for standard colors and several others for thinner and one spare, and there were separate manifolds for hand-held manual spray guns used for interior and cut-ins. Every time two cars in a row had different colors, all of those guns had to shoot thinner from the manifolds to the guns (through the floor grates) to clean out the previous color, then charge the line with the new color before they could spray again, and that had to take place in about four seconds. Every time you could paint two cars in a row the same color, you'd save about $1.00 worth of thinner by not having to purge all the guns.

"Special Paint" colors were done by dragging 5-gallon pressurized paint pots through the booths and manually spraying everything; if there was a fleet or special order large enough, they charged one of the spare circulating systems, but that didn't happen very often - it didn't pay to charge a spare system for less than 100 cars.

Lots of other factors (primarily work standards line balance and option workload in the Trim Shop) determined whether or not batch painting made sense, as bodies entered the Fisher Trim Shop in the same sequence in which they left the Paint Shop; i.e., you didn't want six vinyl top jobs in a row in the Trim Shop (which would really tear up the line balance) just to save some thinner in the Paint Shop.

:beers:

What about computers in the plant? There were some around in the 60's but they were not very useful yet. The personal computer was not invented until the early 70's.

The "Data Processing Department" had the only computer in the plant, a huge IBM mainframe that handled scheduling, procurement, and payroll systems; input was IBM punchcards, and so was output to line-printers and teletype-style printers on the plant floor. Storage was huge open-reel tape drives and horrendously-expensive disk packs. That whole room full of equipment had less throughput and storage than one of today's laptops. There were zero computers on the plant floor - process equipment and tooling were controlled by huge relay panels, IBM cards, and paper tape. PC's and computerized machine controllers didn't show up until the early 80's.

It was a different world then. :)

Thanks John for to take the time for the in-depth and interesting answer.

I always love reading JohnZ's responses!:yes:

belive it, there were robots there : they just breathed air and ate food like all of us! you do nine + hours on the line and you'll know what im talking about