Quality Powder Coating for Energy Sector

Hitachi Energy is one of the world's leading manufacturers of high-voltage equipment and produces some of the components required for this in Brno.

In the Czech Republic's second largest city, the company coats aluminum tubes up to 12 m long, which have different geometries inside and a diameter of up to 0.80 m, using the environmentally friendly powder coating process.

A capacity doubling was needed while still ensuring that the coating of the workpieces met high safety and quality standards due to the high-risk area of application:

An increase in output with the automatic guns of the existing old plant was not possible to the requested scope.

In addition, the company also wanted to make the coating process more economical and achieve powder savings in order to meet its high environmental requirements.

Based on this, the decision was made to invest in a new, robot-guided powder plant.

As part of their research, Hitachi Energy executives researched HDLV dense phase technology and conducted some preliminary testing at an HVAC manufacturer's facility.

"Although we did not have 3D models of the workpieces for this robotic coating and therefore could not program the robots accurately, our customer was impressed with the results," says Ing. Jaroslav Blažek Managing Director at Czech system integrator Surfin Technology. To put the technology to the test on the workpieces in its own production, Hitachi Energy received two Encore® HD manual powder coating systems from Nordson.

The powder guns that go with them are lightweight and well-balanced, and enable high-quality, fast coatings that can be repeatable at any time, regardless of the powder. They also feature excellent coating of edges and corners, as well as optimal penetration depth, even into challenging shapes.

"We were extremely positively surprised by the performance of Nordson HDLV technology. We did not expect the result like this," Vaclav Holecek Production Development Specialist / Corrosion Engineer at Hitachi Energy, reports in retrospect. Due to the very good results, the company decided to use this technology and contracted Surfin Technology to install two Nordson ColorMax® E (engineered) powder coating systems with robotic coating guns.

Installation and commissioning of the new powder coating system was implemented by Surfin Technology together with Nordson service technicians in December 2021 during the holiday season, allowing the system to start operating immediately after the production break. "By combining robots and Nordson dense phase technology, we have doubled our production output, even though we are powder coating with fewer guns than before," says Vaclav Holecek at Hitachi Energy, summarizing the experience with the new powder coating system. "We have been able to install high process repeatability for our process, and the system now allows us to plan production and monitor the production process more efficiently.

At the same time, the manual work and rework previously required has been reduced to almost zero. From time to time, for example with special workpieces, we still work with manual coating. For this purpose, we also have our own station with a manual booth and an Encore HD dolly in production.

Thanks to the soft cloud provided by HDLV technology, the same high-quality result is always achieved.

With employees in mind, high operator safety is ensured at the same time, as well as maximum material utilization and a significant reduction in powder consumption." Holecek proudly adds, "We have simply found a very modern and high-quality coating solution for our very important products to contribute to a sustainable energy future for future generations."

With the coated products, the manufacturer of high-voltage equipment is now able to meet the strict requirements of safety standards and repeat the coating processes of the different products at any time. They can also efficiently plan production and monitor the processes with the future-oriented Industry 4.0 standard. By reducing powder consumption and maximizing material utilization, the company's own high environmental targets can be met.

Combining robots and Nordson HDLV technology, Hitachi Energy doubled production output, even though they coat with fewer powder spray guns than before.

The soft spray of the Encore® HD powder coating system ensures maximum process control.

Hitachi Energy has selected Nordson’s automatic Color-on-Demand® (CoD) system and color changes are done in 20 – 50 seconds.