[Keith Seymore]

We went to robotics in the mid to late 80's at truck, both reciprocating arm sprayers and then, slightly later, a "turbine bell".

The "Mini bell", as it was called, was a Behr product. It was a small cone shaped head, like a shower head, that spun at a high rate of speed (ie, 20,000 rpm) and slung the paint towards the car. The car was electrically charged so that the paint particles were "drawn" to it. In fact, you could stand next to the car and see the paint going around corners to attach to the back side.

The only problem was....the electrical charge would cause all the metallic particles in the paint to line up in an orderly fashion. This, of course, meant they didn't match the paint chip - or the front clip. We ended up spraying a top coat on those metallic colors manually in the paint repair both so that everything would match like it was supposed to. Non metallic color cars could just pass right through.

K