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Ford Motor Company is a global automotive industry leader based in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford Dearborn Stamping Plant manufactures and distributes automobiles across six continents. With about 172,000 employees and 65 plants worldwide, the company’s automotive brands include Ford and Lincoln. The Ford Dearborn Stamping Plant opened in 1939 manufacturing model A fender and miscellaneous body parts. Current products produced include doors, roofs and hoods for the F150 (Ford and Lincoln models), Escape, Superduty, Raptor, Mustang, Focus, Expedition, and Navigator.

Ford engineers have developed the automotive industry’s first robotic test driving program to aid in strenuous durability on vehicles. This new technology eliminates the safety concerns of using human drivers and allows for even more accelerated, intense testing. The tests can simulate ten years of daily driving abuse into courses just a few hundred yards long; with surfaces that include broken concrete, cobblestones, metal grates, rough gravel, mud pits and oversized speed bumps.

Ford Motor Company contacted SlipNOT® to add a steel slip resistant steel coating to the steel speed bumps to make them more abrasive when the F150 series and Raptors hit the speed bumps.

The Ford Dearborn Stamping Plant sentSlipNOT® several steel speed bumps for SlipNOT® to apply a Grade 3 steel coating and paint them yellow. The speed bumps were welded horizontally over a shallow pit with a grate covering where any loose bolts would be knocked off. The speed bumps help Ford resolve any squeak, alignment, and rattle issues prior to being certified for customer use. The speed bumps were purchased specifically for the 2013 and 2014 F 150 Series and Raptors.

Ford’s objective was to create a test track solution that allows for this type of intense testing that could take Ford vehicles to the most extreme limits of their engineering while ensuring the safety of all involved. Ford continuously works to improve the safety of its products and employees. The reliability, durability and performance enhancements that Ford developed will not only help them reach their safety and accuracy goals, but will also improve vehicle automation. SlipNOT® slip resistant Grade 3 steel coating is ideal for strenuous vehicle testing to ensure all vehicles leave the Ford Stamping Plant is safe for consumers.