Job Story

“VW Autohaus Südhannover“ in Goettingen, Germany
January 5, 2017

Carsten Siebert, a paint refinishing expert with a master craftsman diploma, has been heading the paint refinishing shop with seven people at VW Autohaus Südhannover in Goettingen, Germany. On average, the shop paints 12 vehicles per day.
Siebert’s paint refinishing team had been working with a Sartorius PMA.Quality paint-mixing scale so far. We asked him to put the successor model, the new PMA Evolution, through its paces in a grueling test. The following is a report on the paint team’s experiences after operating the scale for half a year at the shop.

Carsten Siebert:
“What really caught our eye is the new display. The readability is really perfect based on the high black-and-white contrast and the large size of the digits, and is beyond comparison with any other paint scale. As most paint shop operators watch the display while dosing paint components, the PMA Evolution display features are really easy on the eyes, especially when your eyesight tends to weaken over time.

We were already familiar with in-use covers for the weighing pan and the display from using the PMA.Quality, but now Sartorius even offered an in-use cover for the column on top of that as part of its offer – and a complete set of in-use covers is supplied as standard for the new scale. That means I can protect the scale from top to bottom from paint splashes, and the scale stays looking nice – a whole lot better than many gunked up scales you otherwise see in many shops. If the glass display does get a little smudge of paint now and then, you can easily wipe it off with a cloth and a solvent. This is really a neat and clean solution.

The entire team took notice of the low-profile weighing pan design. Although the difference is only approximately 2 cm or not quite one inch, this low height definitely simplifies dosing of paint components, reducing the effort needed to lift paint cans, especially the relatively large ones.

A further plus is the really easy installation of PMA Evolution. Only one USB cable needs to be plugged into our computer, enabling data communication with our color database software as well as power supply to the scale at the same time. That even gives me an extra plug-in port available in the mixing room to use for other equipment.
On the whole, we are really very satisfied with the PMA Evolution, and we feel that all other paint-mixing scales will have to measure up to this new standard from now on.”