Canadian Finishing & Coatings Manufacturing - Sept/Oct '23 - 20

INDUSTRIAL FINISHING: MATERIAL HANDLING
" Ventcor was a godsave for us. They supplied the conveyor
system, washer, and ovens. And they built an environmental
room in our spray booth to help control dust and humidity
fluctuations, " says Letham. " They also installed the Gema
booth for us and provided us with engineers for a couple of
weeks. "
Pino Martella, president of Ventcor, says they supplied
a very simple monorail conveyor system that's an enclosed
track conveyor from Jervis B Webb Company. " One unique
aspect was that the customer worked with his robotic supplier
to engineer a load bar configuration that allows the part to be
hung on angles and enables the robots to grab the bar to put it
on or take it off the line. You don't see that very often. "
Ventcor builds pre-treatment washers, but with any project
it requires the entire team meaning you need to involve the
chemical company that will define the pre-treatment process.
In this case it was BASF Chemetall that analysed the materials
being processed and the cleanliness of the product.
" They define the process. They'll tell the group that a fivestage
pre-treatment is needed-an alkaline clean, double rinse
and if they need some reverse osmosis or water purification, "
says Martella. " We mostly use a RO water purification system
to purify the water coming to the washer so there is clean
water for rinsing and charging the chemical tanks or the
zirconium treatment. Using that pre-treatment, all we had to
do is neutralise the wastewater coming off the system with a
pH neutralising system. Not everyone can do that as it's up to
the municipality dealing with the wastewater. "
For the oven systems, Ventcor supplied a gas-fired infrared
process. It ensures that there is a slightly positive pressure
inside the room to prevent dirt from entering and supply fresh
air for the operators.
" Powder booths prefer an environment that is just slightly
pressurised. We do all of those calculations and size the unit
accordingly. The next important thing is air flow distribution.
We can't have a whirlwind inside the e-room. That disrupts
the powder. So we engineered the duct work to maintain a
velocity of below 40 feet per minute. You don't want anything
greater than that around the powder booth opening as that
could blow the powder out of the booth. Filtering the air going
back to the AC unit is also key because no matter how great
a powder booth is, there's operator error or a hose could pop
off. And if there's powder in the air it's going to get on the
cooling coils of the AC unit. We need proper filtration on
that return air, " says Martella. " The next thing we do is add a
humidification system into the room. You want to maintain a
relative humidity of between 30 and 60 per cent. We typically
set it at 50 per cent rH and it manages itself, especially during
the dry months of the winter. "
All of the units Ventcor built and supplied, and the Gema
booth, are managed through a programmable logic controller
(PLC) and operators can input variables and control
temperature and speed through an HMI. Martella says
that there is communication and some interlocks between
Ventcor's system and the Gema booth to monitor the booth
activity. The Gema system also monitors the conveyor with
an encoder that's mounted on the conveyor drive.
With the finishing line in place, Letham built out the rest
(IR) booster oven to preheat the parts before the powder
booth, and a convection oven for curing the powder.
" We put the IR at the entrance to get some energy in the
parts and help flow out that powder so that when it enters the
turbulent zone or convection zone, where there's a lot of air
movement, the powder doesn't blow off. A fast colour change
booth can change colours in 12 to 13 minutes. If we have an
oven that's 25 minutes long, there could be two or three
colours in that oven at the same time and we don't want to
risk that contamination. The IR system also helps remove the
potential of any recirculating dirt, " says Martella.
To further control the contamination and fluctuating
environmental issues, the environment room that Ventcor
built was designed specifically for this powder coating
20
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of his production line by tapping Yaskawa Motoman for
automated robotics. Enter St. Thomas-Ont.-based DMAC
Automation, a Motoman solution provider and a company
that specialises in integrated robotics for material handling
and welding processes.
" We started with the paint line, providing automation for
loading and unloading with automated Motoman arms. We
also provided welding automation that welds the toolboxes.
And it's an infinite number of boxes those welding cells can
process, " says Dave Minor, president of DMAC. " It can go
from a 24x24x10-inch deep box to one that's 36x36x8-feet
long. There's automated tooling and it has a three station
indexing head, so the operator can put a different box in each
station and tell the system what stations they're in and it
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Canadian Finishing & Coatings Manufacturing - Sept/Oct '23

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