Latest Powder Color-Change Technology

Aesthetic Finishers caters to industries that require the highest quality finishes. “We pride ourselves on the reputation we’ve earned as a Class A finisher,” explains Bill Coomer, the facility’s owner.

“Our customers demand it. We can’t send an Easter-egg looking stove back to one of our appliance customers, for example. Moreover, any color contamination costs us money in rejects and wasted powder. For a while, it seemed the only way to meet the high standards of Aesthetic Finishers’ customers was to spray to waste instead of reclaiming powder.”

As one of Ohio’s largest powder and ceramic coating facilities, Aesthetic Finishers caters to industries that require the highest quality finishes. Here, appliance parts are being sprayed, just one job of the hundreds of parts that are coated each week in more than 50 different colors, at the shop’s 80,000 sq.-ft. facility.

Aesthetic Finishers’ owner, Bill Coomer, worked with Nordson Corporation to devise a booth that would minimize powder contamination while accommodating a range of profiles. The result of their collaboration was a customized version of the ColorMax® 3 Powder Spray System, which is designed to maximize powder usage and nearly eliminate any contamination.

Coomer turned to his colleagues at Nordson Corporation, Amherst, Ohio, for a better solution. In the process of developing the latest in its line of powder coating technologies, Nordson and Coomer worked togetherto devise a booth that would minimize powder contamination while accommodating a range of profiles.

The result of their collaboration was a customized version of the ColorMax®3 Powder Spray System. Designed to maximize powder usage and nearly eliminate any contamination, the booth is constructed of proprietary Apogee® canopy material, which offers the least amount of powder attraction. As a result, it enhances color change speed, eliminates the possibility of cross-contamination of colors, and makes routine booth cleaning quick and easy. 

Other features that maximize powder efficiency include:

1. Open-face canopy design and external manual touch-up stations improve first-pass transfer efficiency with full and easy access around part.
2. Airwash that moves powder to the extraction plenum and ensures minimum powder-in-process. Single plenum along the center of the booth to reduce contamination risk.
3. Access doors in cyclone and plenum for easy cleaning.
4. HDLV® (high-density powder, low volume air) pumping technology continuously returns powder back to feed center for peak recovery efficiency.

“We were in the early stages of developing this product when Bill contacted us,” says Frank Mohar, Nordson Powder Systems Specialist. “We spent a couple of months at his facility, working together to improve the ‘if you can see it, then you can clean it’ concept. His input was instrumental in achieving our proof of concept and color-change testing capabilities with the system in the Nordson customer test laboratory.

“I love the performance,” Coomer says. “We can even get contamination- free white to black. And our actual powder cost savings are phenomenal. We are reclaiming about 97 percent of all the powder we use in this booth right now.”