OREANDA-NEWS. This year, JSC Neftekamsk Automobile Plant, a subsidiary of KAMAZ in Bashkiria, earmarks 165 million roubles for development. Priorities in its investment budget are given to dump truck production.

The reason is that almost 50% of the Russian dump truck market is taken by vehicles on KAMAZ chassis. And Neftekamsk Automobile Plant producing dumping units for them focuses on new technologies, mainly for welding and painting. It will help to enhance competitiveness of produced vehicles, increase labour productivity and improve working conditions.

The most important projects of 2013 include the introduction of a coordinate multi-electrode machine CSA 102-S for welding of sides of dump trucks 45143 and trailer equipment. It is developed and sold with the participation of the German company IDEAL WERK. The introduction of the automated complex will enable to greatly improve the quality of welds.

Another large investment project is preliminary works for the installation of a robotized complex for painting of the exterior of dumping platforms. The introduction of the robots is scheduled for the first quarter of 2014. The set includes robots made by FANUC (Japan) produced in the USA, and also equipment by WAGNER (Germany) which enables to deliver the basic component and hardener of two-component paint-and-lacquer materials to a spray gun separately, without premixing, and single-component paint-and-lacquer materials. Besides, the company uses robot control equipment by SIEMENS (Germany), linear sliding bearings by GUDEL (Switzerland).

For the latest years, Neftekamsk Automobile Plant has completely reconstructed its paint shop in the dump truck production unit. The company introduced varnish-and-paint complexes produced in Germany with shot blasting surface preparation for painting, an electrostatic painting vomplex. They ensure high-quality painting of products with protective decorative properties to meet world standards. The company uses two robots for painting of the interior of dumping platforms. The use of robots for exterior painting will be the final stage of the technology automation process.

The company will soon finish the next stage of the reconstruction – the introduction of painter robots in order to improve a hard and labour intensive process of painting of dumping platforms.