Equipment care: 3 main rules

Often the cause of poor coating is not only improper application of paint to the surface, but also insufficient care of the devices used in this work. For example, uncleaned spray chambers can easily degrade the attraction of paint particles. A malfunctioning recuperator can spoil whole batches of powder paint. And if you don’t know how to adjust the voltage and air supply from the spray, you can get a coating with a lot of defects. Indeed, equipment maintenance is just as important as paint application. Therefore, it is worthwhile to understand well what you are working with, to monitor cleanliness and be able to properly adapt the devices to a particular material in order to obtain the best result.

In any production, constant monitoring of the health of equipment and maintaining it in good condition encompasses a large amount of work that cannot be neglected at all. What problems can be comprehended if this issue is not taken seriously enough? Failure of production to produce a quality coating. This will be enough to stop all work and start analyzing how the equipment affects not the process and the result.

Equipment selection

In order to obtain a uniform coating, it is necessary to know exactly the features of the paint, what charge is needed to apply it, what voltage and air flow should be used. This is all set in the settings of the devices used for painting. For example, choosing the same atomizer (and they are different), you need to know exactly what we are dealing with.

Powder paint sprayers (paint guns) are designed for preliminary deposition of paint on products before its polymerization. They differ in the way the powder paint is electrified. When using electrostatic guns, the powder paint that passes through the gun barrel is electrified by an external high voltage source. In a tribostatic spray, paint particles are electrified when they pass through a barrel made of special fluoroplastics by friction. Such a gun does not require an external voltage source.

No less attention should be paid to the choice of a polymer oven. They differ not only in size, but also in the way the products are suspended. They can be dead-end when the product is inserted into the chamber only through one side and from there it is taken out. They can be conveyor, where the conveyor carries the suspended product through the polymerization oven. They are also called single-post or two-post passage. Here you should choose in accordance with other production equipment and its same scale.

Equipment setup

It is worthwhile to specifically understand the goals of production, starting from this, to adjust the equipment at all stages of product creation. The equipment must be adapted to the size and manner of movement. For example, conveyors are used to paint large areas. They must be installed in such a way as to conveniently and quickly move products between different processes for creating a polymer coating.

It is also worth setting the voltage, grounding, air supply, recuperator to the “correct frequencies”. After all, there are different powder paints, there are also different materials. In order to achieve an even coverage, you need to know how much tension should be when painting with ordinary paint, and what when creating various textures. Usually, the principles of work and tips for setting are indicated in the instructions for working with paints.

As for the polymerization chambers, thermoregulation is extremely important here, because the process of forming a polymer film requires a certain temperature for a long time and its correct decrease to cool the coating. The oven must be heated gradually in the initial stages to 200 degrees and kept fixed for 10 minutes, during which time the already melted particles begin to bake and harden. Therefore, the temperature is controlled by a digital thermostat.

Cleaning

Proper cleaning of work surfaces is the secret to success. Cleanliness in the polymer paint application chambers significantly reduces the likelihood of defects. Any dust settling on the electrostatically deposited paint will later turn into a notch, or bubble. Moreover, the remnants of old paint on the equipment can change the voltage and grounding, change the process of electrization of powder particles, not to mention the fact that from the very place where the old paint remains, a piece will peel off and the entire surface will begin to corrode.

Because of this, staff are taught to keep a close eye on their tools. A clean workplace when creating a decorative coating will help to avoid further problems with defects, and also significantly speeds up the process, making it as automated as possible. After all, it is much easier to figure out how to adjust the gun for a particular paint and remember the principle of application than to test everything manually each time.