Highly automated weighing and powder unit cleaning systems reduce paint consumption and increase production output

In an economic climate where rising raw material prices heavily affect paint production and, therefore, the costs beared by end users, using the most appropriate equipment to ensure maximum savings in coating application is a strategic advantage. This is also the opinion of Luca Malfatti, the owner of Oxicolor Srl (Mezzolombardo, Trento, Italy), a company that has been specialising in aluminium surface treatment processes for almost fifty years and that consumes 250 kg of powder coatings daily. [...]

Strategic pre-retouching for optimal coatings

A two-rail conveyor picks up the workpieces to be painted from the buffer located between the pre-treatment tanks and the coating plant. The coating line consists of 2 booths, i.e. a SuperCube machine linked to a Wagner SuperCenter EVO powder management unit and a booth recovered from an old line. “99% of our production is handled in the SuperCube booth. We use the second one only in emergencies,” notes Malfatti. “Thanks to the two-rail conveyor, we have the possibility to send each load bar to either one or the other booth in real time. When a customer presents us with an urgent request for the surface treatment of a small batch of 3 to 5 m2, we avoid stopping the main system and use the second booth. This enables us to meet customer demands without losing productivity.”

The SuperCube machine is equipped with 2 reciprocators featuring 6 PEAC4 XL guns each, 2 manual pre-retouching stations, and 1 post-retouching station. “We generally favour pre-retouching,” says Malfatti, “because accuracy is of the essence, especially in the case of metallic colours. The operator’s hand cannot guarantee the same consistency as the automatic application, so we first intervene manually in a direction perpendicular to that of the reciprocator application. Then, automatic application evens out the layer, so that no overlaps or stretches of paint in opposite directions are visible on the workpiece at the end of the coating process.”

The state-of-the-art powder management unit optimises consumption

“The powder management unit installed,” says Marco Spada, Sales Manager of Wagner, “is the latest version of our SuperCenter EVO, updated just recently. Its main innovations are the two load cells housing the virgin powder boxes, which are placed under the loading container, and the fully automatic cleaning system, managed by the powder unit itself and connected to both the booth and the guns.” “The combination of these two aspects – the automatic weighing and cleaning systems – was the decisive reason why we chose Wagner’s solution,” emphasises Malfatti. “Both the high degree of automation and the completeness of its application concept convinced us. We were looking for a system that was perfectly integrated, efficient in every technological aspect, and thoroughly designed in every detail and Wagner’s project was the most complete one.” [...]

360° cleaning

“In summary,” says Malfatti, “the automatic cleaning process of our SuperCenter EVO has improved our colour change-overs’ management. This takes place with 3 pre-set cycles, from the least intense one, if similar colours follow one another, to the most in-depth one, e.g. in the case of a switch from black to white. Thanks to such automation, our operator only has to clean the booth and no longer the powder management unit. The powder removed during these cleaning operations, as well as that collected from the containers and pipes, is also recovered and therefore never reaches the final filter. Previously, we collected 12 big bags of around 700 kg per year in the final filter, now only 8, which means 30% less powder to dispose of. In times like this, characterised by strong fluctuations in the price of raw materials due to the health crisis, we can only be pleased with the application system we have chosen. We are now equipped with all the tools that enable us to maintain our high quality standards in terms of both coating results and surface treatment processes.”

Source: Monica Fumagalli, "Highly automated weighing and powder unit cleaning systems reduce paint consumption and increase production output", in ipcm® International Paint&Coating Magazine n. 68 (March/April 2021), pages 47-54

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