Melhore o revestimento em pó com "nuvem de pó macio"

“When we were planning the new system, we familiarized ourselves with the current market and compared various providers“ says Rainer Freier, responsible at Miele for purchasing in this segment. “In the end, two criteria were crucial. Of course, Miele stands for quality, or rather the quality of the powder coating. This comes first, followed by the price, which was comparable for all suppliers.“ The quality of the powder coating, the mechanical and chemical resistance, but also how the design is reflected was very important in the procurement of the new powder coating system. In recent years, the design of commercial surfaces has changed from a glossy coarse structure to a finer structure with a matte finish. Those specific coatings and finishes require very different processes and process control than the slightly glossier finishes. “That‘s where we consider the very clear advantage in the new Nordson dense phase coating technology over the Venturi pump technology,“ adds Andreas Eichbaum. “This also matches the recommendations of our powder supplier, which we incorporated into our decision.“

Tests at Nordson‘s lab in Erkrath, Germany, were also decisive for the purchase decision. “Our products, which we produce at the Lehrte plant, have a very high variance. We went to the lab with reference components that reflect our broad spectrum. We cross-referenced the results and discovered that Nordson delivers the most advanced coating results. On the one hand, this related to the coating thickness, which was the highly uniform, and on the other hand, the component geometries, which are difficult to coat,“ reports Johannes Reimer, production manager at Miele & Cie. KG in Lehrte.

The powder coating system consists of the standard ColorMax3 fast color change booth, the Spectrum®  HD powder feed center and PowderPilot™ HD control system, eight Encore®  HD automatic guns, after filter and twin cyclone. The system was installed at Miele in March 2021. “We had a very ambitious schedule for the entire project,“ says Andreas Eichbaum, “partly because we replaced the system during ongoing operation. It turned out that we ran production in two shifts per day, and in the third shift the system was converted. The coordination with the team of Nordson went very well both leading up to and during the two-week set-up phase. In the third week, the f irst programs were tested, the system was ramped up, and we were able to start a trial run relatively quickly. We had a very clear schedule and after a total of six weeks we went into series production as planned. We were very well supported by Nordson the whole time and the assembled system, delivered and commissioned, fully met our requirements.“

O novo pó sistema de revestimento é usado para revestir várias centenas de componentes diferentes que são sempre recorrentes. Programas de revestimento correspondentes foram configurados para o acabamento superficial dos conjuntos de componentes, que sempre alcançam os mesmos resultados precisos com repetibilidade. O controle máximo do processo é possibilitado pela transmissão de fase densa do pó, de modo que os programas só precisam ser criados uma vez para os diferentes componentes. Da mesma forma, o revestimento de componentes de recesso profundo tornou-se muito mais fácil devido à nuvem de pó macio da tecnologia de fase densa HDLV®.

Os produtos não são apenas revestidos na parte frontal, mas também as superfícies superior e lateral também são revestidas. "A porta das nossas máquinas de lavar é um componente muito importante, também para o cliente final. Este sempre foi um componente, que tradicionalmente era revestido manualmente. Agora, com o novo sistema, conseguimos automatizar completamente o revestimento em pó", diz Andreas Eichbaum sobre sua experiência inicial com o novo sistema de pulverização em pó. "Por um lado, isso se deve ao fato de o componente ter que ser revestido de ambos os lados e possuir geometrias muito profundas em um lado, o que dificulta a carga eletrostática do componente. Devido à nuvem de pó macio, ambos os lados do componente são revestidos com a espessura de revestimento uniforme necessária a partir de agora", e ele conclui: "A dispersão do pó foi significativamente reduzida em comparação com antes, o que obviamente também economiza muito pó ."