Top 5 Reasons Your Paint System Should be Replaced

#5 Line gaps limit production throughput.

#4 Your plant is Lean EXCEPT for your paint line

#3 You constantly have a large pile of parts waiting to be finished since they have to be batched.

#2 Maintenance spends at least 10 hours/ month fixing your existing system.

And the #1 reason your paint system needs replaced:
– Hearing protection is required within 50′ of your paint production line.

Underproductive paint systems are no joke. If you are interested in learning about IntelliFinishing’s spinning tube, variable speed and silent paint finishing systems, visit us at www.intellifinishing.com.

 

Midwest Coatings Seminar in Tulsa, Oklahoma

IntelliFinishing will be hosting the Midwest Coatings Seminar in Tulsa, OK at Hard Rock Casino on August 21, 2014

Come and learn about powder coating from Kevin Biller (also known as Joe Powder in Powder Coated Tough  Magazine) and robots on your paint line from Mike Dilday of Fanuc robots.

For more information and to sign up visit:

Part II: Safety–Not an Afterthought

Going beyond our technologically advanced components and space saving design, a large part of our job at IntelliFinishing is working with our customers to solve their problems and challenges. There are usually a few key hurdles that lead a customer to consider purchasing a system or renovating their existing setup. As part of a four part series, we will look at the specific challenges one of our recent customers faced, and the solutions provided by IntelliFinishing.

Another challenge at the top of our customer’s needs was creating a safe work environment. With their existing manual system, the physical demand on the operators of lifting and loading parts through the various processes was excessive. The existing system was also very loud and difficult to keep clean with the several open-faced paint booths used to coat their parts.

Again, IntelliFinishing was able to incorporate several pieces of equipment into the system that all worked together seamlessly for a safe, quiet, and productive paint line. The first step was adding a lowerator to assist the operators in racking parts. The lowerator takes a carrier from the height of the process equipment down directly to the parts. This makes loading much easier, especially on heavier parts, and prevents stretching or straining when loading or unloading.

To limit chemical exposure to the operators, a multi-stage automated washer was added to improve the efficiency of chemical use and provide controlled containment of the chemicals as well. By reducing the overall usage of the chemicals our customer also reduced their chemical emissions to the environment, which was an added benefit.

Other safety factors that were built into the design included laser area scanners that stopped the conveyor when personnel or fork trucks were present in specified “danger zones” and insulated process equipment and special ducting to keep noise levels significantly below the 75dB required. The noise reduction in the paint line led to over 25 employees being removed from our customer’s hearing conservation program. Like my father always said, “A great paint line should be seen, and not heard.”

Though I suppose he may have been talking about us children.

Contact us today to find out how we can make your paint operations safer, quieter, and more efficient.

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Part III: The Lights are On, But No One is Home

Going beyond our technologically advanced components and space saving design, a large part of our job at IntelliFinishing is working with our customers to solve their problems and challenges. There are usually a few key hurdles that lead a customer to consider purchasing a system or renovating their existing setup. As part of a four part series, we will look at the specific challenges one of our recent customers faced, and the solutions provided by IntelliFinishing.

The third goal for our customer was to reduce energy consumption and eliminate waste as much as possible. This makes sense, as energy rates continue to rise and the emphasis on lean and green continues to grow.

As we promote so often at IntelliFinishing, independent studies have shown that our unique chainless power and free conveyor can save over 40% on utility bills when compared to the antiquated monument systems. This held true for this project as well, but there were other innovations that helped as well.

Simply replacing the 6 open-faced paint booths with a single automated booth went a long way in reducing energy use on the booths themselves, as well as the air handling units used to condition air going into and air being exhausted from the paint line. Our conveyor line is also decoupled, allowing each drive section to operate independently, only running when a carrier is present. The same could be said for the process washer as well. So while a monument system may have two or three large motors pulling chain continuously, the IntelliFinishing system breaks our conveyor down into much smaller sections that are controlled by much smaller variable speed drives. In this way, more motors does not equate to greater electricity usage, but actually reduced demands and added great flexibility.

The process equipment used in IntelliFinishing systems is also a step above the industry norm. Our oven and washer panels are insulated to help keep chemical tanks and curing chambers at temperature. On average this makes our process equipment 75-80% more energy efficient. Automated product doors also help to prevent heat loss. As a side note, the insulated ovens we incorporate in our systems also prevent accidental burns of employees. Even running at temperature, you can place your hand on the sidewall.

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Read Part II

Read Part IV

Part IV: Detailed Recipes Make More than Grandma’s Brownies

picture of brownies

Grandma’s brownies

Going beyond our technologically advanced components and space saving design, a large part of our job at IntelliFinishing is working with our customers to solve their problems and challenges. There are usually a few key hurdles that lead a customer to consider purchasing a system or renovating their existing setup. As part of a four part series, we will look at the specific challenges one of our recent customers faced, and the solutions provided by IntelliFinishing.

The final major challenge presented to us by our customer was the desire to integrate technology and traceability into the new paint system. The parts being produced at their facility often ended up in military applications, so the more data they could track, the tighter their process controls – and thus quality – could be.

IntelliFinishing’s solution was to introduce our Enterprise Automation Software technology which provides detailed part tracking, parameter monitoring, and full system traceability. Using this system meant that every part was set up with a recipe to define paint spec, masking instructions, curing time, and all other information tied to that specific product. Products can be grouped so items that follow similar processes can be put together.

In operation, parts are scanned with a barcode reader when racked on a carrier, instead of hand-writing a job traveler. Once the parts are scanned onto a loadbar, interactive touch screens at the load station can notify the operator of incompatible part families and diagrams of how to hang or mask the part. As the loaded carrier moves through the system, the touchscreens can show the status of each carrier, such as how long it has been in the oven. This information can also be accessed from a secure desktop log-in elsewhere in the plant. For this customer we were able to provide product logging that showed items like time and date stamps for when the product was painted, who the operator was, the temperature and humidity of the curing chamber. These and all other information is tracked and logged in a secure server so if a quality issue arises it can be traced back to the source of the problem.

The beauty of IntelliFinishing’s Enterprise Automation Software is that it is virtually limitless in the data and information it can track, log, and show. Passwords and user ID’s can also be set up to restrict editing capabilities, etc. The system can also be used for labor tracking and efficiency studies.

Call us today and let us show you how we can track your success!

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Read Part III

 

Lean seminar hosted by IntelliFinishing is educational

Garyfrom TCA

Gary Conner from TCA

Lean was the focus of the Midwest Coatings Seminar on August 8th in Salina, Kansas. Gary Conner from Technical Change Associates shared many valuable stories from his experience implementing lean for his own company, as well as leading companies on their lean journey. Brad Muir, president of Technical Change Associates continued the discussion reviewing a variety of plant layouts.

The group of approximately fifty attendees from regional manufacturers learned that the implementation of lean is more than using the lean tools. Working with the diverse personalities of a team and listening to their concerns will help ensure a successful outcome and build a culture of continual improvement.

Brad shared before and after’s of plant floor layouts. One case study from a few years ago presented an impossible challenge for the manufacturer due to constraints on the finishing line. At the time, Brad concluded that the layout he desired was impossible because of the limitations of the conveyors. Upon learning more about IntelliFinishing, Brad and the IntelliFinishing team designed a couple of different layouts that would have worked for the manufacturer.

Dan Stutterheim, CEO of Kasa Companies followed up with a presentation on Eliminating Waste from Communication. David Underhill, IntelliFinishing Sales provided a presentation on Improving Production Line Gaps.

 

 

Using Big Data To Track Your Parts

When it comes to capturing big data to track and market your future business, Konnection software allows you to use a variety of collected data from your plant floor to make decisions for your business. Imagine being able to use PLC, equipment, process and ERP/MRP data to see past trends and analyze root cause and energy use over your entire process.

Production data is key to making sure your system is efficient and profitable. Konnection software turns your data into easy to read graphs detailing the information you have in a reviewable database created by your real-time production. This allows you to monitor production like never before. Recognize trends, view your total number of jobs and carriers, maximize shift productivity and track unproductive aspects of your floor.

Process tracking allows your company to ensure quality of your work and provides your operators detailed work instructions, the ability to compare shift reports and closely monitor energy and resource usage. Ensure that your parts went through the finishing system in the same amount of time every time. Use our software to check coating times, or when carriers entered and exited the system. With this information you can answer questions about what’s happening at every point in your process. With Konnection software, you’ll know everything about the process — even down to if your operator held or released the carrier within the allotted time.

systemreport

Production data is key to making sure your system is efficient and profitable. Konnection software turns your data into easy to read graphs detailing the information you have in a reviewable database created by your real-time production.

Tracking your parts is essential to making sure you are getting the most out of your process, and ultimately your business. With this level of system reporting, you can easily locate parts in the finishing system, and have their data accessible at a later date via serial numbers. An overview screen gives a visual representation of your stations and are color coded for quick detection for status review. You can see what is loaded on each carrier, where that carrier is in your system and then quickly export the selected data via spreadsheets or .csv files. Data can also be filtered by any field, allowing you to look at the production of a single part over a month or at all parts produced in a day.

Our Konnection software connects to your factory floor to your upper level software like SAP and your ERP seamlessly with the format of the data translated to read E-Net, DeviceNet, ProfiBus, ModBus, Serial and many more. The core of our software is SQL server that utilizes redundant servers, and is capable of using your existing hardware. This web-based software is visible from mobile devices and can even send text messages and alarms fault to the screens.

For more information on how you can maximize your plant floor, contact IntelliFinishing with your request for Konnection software.

Upcoming Trade Shows

Join us at these upcoming trade shows to view a live full-scale demonstration.

The Powder Coating Show • September 16-18 • Indianapolis, IN

FABTECH • November 11-13 • Atlanta, GA