BODY-IN-WHITE, referred to as BIW is an essential constituent in an Automobile Industry. Here is where the basic body of the automobile is made. The term BIW is coined because the body of the automobile is made from sheets that are unpainted so far and hence have a whitish appearance.

The process of constructing the BIW consists of :

• Making the panels of the body such as floor pans, body sides, roof bows, roof headers, roof, quarter panel etc called as STAMPING,which are individually stamped and pressed in a press shop with the help of heavy presses and these individual panels are joined together to form the car body
• The joining process is done by SPOT WELDING mostly, and in some cases with the help of Arc Welding (Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) referred as MIG welding /Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW) referred as TIG welding)

BIW has basic terms used by vehicle stylist as mentioned below:

1.      A-Pillar: If we see a vehicle the side view, our foremost roof support of a vehicle, located in between the outer edge of the windshield and the leading edge of the front door upper. It is also known as an A-Post. It is the crucial, unavoidable structural part of BIW. Many OEM’s try to keep minimum width of A-pillar, since it can become obstruction in driver visibility while taking turn.

2.      B-Pillar: It is the second pillar from front & acts as the roof support between a vehicle’s front door window and rear side window.  

3.      C-Pillar: It is the roof support between a vehicle’s rearmost side window and its rear window. Also known as a C-Post. On a vehicle with four side pillars, the rearmost roof support may be called a D-Pillar.

 Typical Body Shop :

250~300 pressed panels from in-house and vendor facilities are brought to different subassembly stations of Body Weld Shop. Subassemblies of pressed components are carried out mainly by resistance welding and other joining methods in a planned sequence at number of stations. Some subassemblies are done in off-line manufacturing cells and fed in at appropriate locations into the main assembly line.Front end, rear floor, and front floor, are transported to underbody body line, where all these are welded together in sequence to form the floor structure. Underbody is then transferred to main body welding station.

Right hand and left hand body side panels are brought from two sides to main body weld station, after completion of all subassembly operations in separate lines. Pre framing of body structure is carried out on special fixture. At same or next station, roof is added to form the body shell, Thereafter, rear doors, front fenders, hood and decklid/ tailgate fitments are carried out to complete the body-in-White. Sometimes, a metal finish line may be added for minor repair of Body-in-White before it moves for painting.

What is involved in each of the Spot welding Lines and Stations? 

• Each Spot welding Line consists of a number of Spot welding Stations and each Spot welding Station consists of a number of Robots ranging from 1 to 5 and activities in each Spot welding station can typically be as follows :
• Material Handling by a robot  to Pick up the component and place on fixture
• Pick up more components and place on fixture
• Clamping of the components together to facilitate spot welding
• Robots move in to Spot weld spots
• Pick up the finished component and transfer it to the next Station and this could be either done by Material handling robots or by dedicated Transfer mechanisms
• Sometimes, the same robot could be involved in Material Handling as well as Spot welding. In such cases, the robots will have both a GRIPPER and a Spot welding gun mounted at the TCP. In these cases, the TCP will have to be changed depending on the end effector to be used.