Streamlined Powder Coating System Enhances Production Efficiency
Implementing a recipe-based powder coating system for their products was of paramount importance for the Greenheck Group. Their IntelliFinishing system represents the most flexible, easy to use, and maintain, option available. Their IntelliFinishing system was meticulously designed to be user-friendly and easily accessible to every team member, plus very easy to train new employees upon as changes occur in their workforce.
For Greenheck, the IntelliFinishing recipe-based per product feature was crucial to appropriately finish the range of products they manufacture. Despite a sophisticated recipe system, Greenheck also highly appreciates how easy it is to use and how accessible it is for all of their team members without the need for extensive training.
Greenheck’s finishing process begins with loading products onto the paint line and selecting the appropriate recipe for the part loaded. Loading is followed by an automatic five-stage spray wash. The wash strips the products down to bare metal, removing dust, grease, oils, and grime as well as applying a conversion coating to improve finish adhesion and longevity. Next, parts move into an oven to evaporate moisture so that the products are completely dry before the application of powder paint. Time in this dry off oven can vary by carrier to ensure all parts are completely dry no matter their water or humidity retaining properties, but also to use energy more efficiently because fast drying products spend less time in the oven than slower drying products.
Next, the product carriers enter a clean, humidity and temperature controlled environmental room by Midwest Finishing Systems and then a series of two powder coating paint booths. Both paint booths were provided by Nordson. The first booth uses FANUC robots for powder application. The robots handle 95% of the powder painting process automatically, often without the need for any further manual touch up, which, if needed, occurs in the second manual booth. Some of Greenheck’s very customized products will not have an assigned robot powder coating recipe and will automatically flow to the manual booth without engaging the robots. Also, if for some reason a product that has a robot recipe is found by the sensing system to not be in the proper place or position on the carrier, the sensing system will deactivate the robot program to not damage the parts or the robots. Those carriers will simply travel through the robotic booth, directly to the manual booth. Greenheck says that only about 5% of products require any manual touch-ups or full product coating through manual application.
After quality checks, the products travel into the cure oven. For products requiring a two-coat paint, Greenheck’s conveyor system includes a loop through a gel oven to achieve a tacky texture before returning to the e-room and powder booths to receive a second coat and then a final round of curing.
The cure ovens heat the products to 375-400 degrees for total of about 35 minutes but with wide variability by carrier recipe. After leaving the ovens products are allowed to cool down while travelling back to the unload area.
After the first nine months of operation, Chris Salyer, Greenheck Group Production Manager says, “So far the overall production has been going very smoothly.” You can view Chris’ full testimonial here.
