We are proud to present you the new Eurotherm flexible “box” painting system created for Giletta SpA for mixed cycle painting with liquid primer and powder finish.
Giletta SpA and the customer’s request
Bucher Municipal is the group that includes historic brands of snow removal and de-icing equipment manufacturers, among which Giletta SpA of Revello (CN) stands out. Founded in 1950, the company designed the first salt spreader with a double power chain, technology derived from the production of agricultural machinery, which had a capacity of 11 cubic meters, compared to 6 cubic meters of the largest spreader in Europe in circulation.
Since that moment, many steps forward have been made, and the technical characteristics of the winter maintenance vehicles guarantee, even today, great flexibility of use, reliability and precision : characteristics that the company also wanted to find in the new painting plant.
If it is true that “the winters of the past no longer exist” it is equally true that the snowfalls in recent years have turned into real, sudden blizzards . This means that suppliers of snow and ice management equipment often find themselves working with the need for last-minute supplies and no longer, as happened in the past, with long-term planning.
This climate change has required the sector of companies that manage snow and ice to evolve their models to guarantee two fundamental requirements:
- resistance exceeding 2,000 hours in salt spray.
- The stringent deadlines of 3 weeks from receipt of the order to delivery of the finished machine.
These were the two needs of Giletta SpA and from here we started to create this painting plant which focuses on the quality and flexibility of operations.
Mixed cycle painting with liquid primer and powder finish
Giletta SpA has always painted in-house to have total control of the process and guarantee the necessary coating quality of machines that work with aggressive agents. For the company, in fact, painting has an aesthetic value, but above all a performance one.
To guarantee corrosion resistance for more than 2,000 hours in salt spray, we studied, together with Giletta technicians and consultant Fabio Baldo (owner of Tecniver), a painting system that would allow a mixed finishing cycle with liquid primer and powder finish.
“ The reason that led us to replace the powder primer with a liquid primer is that it has lower penetration than the liquid primer, especially on components such as those of our machines, which have numerous welded castings and particular geometries.
Furthermore, with a view to increasing the corrosion resistance of painted products, we believe that the chemical formulation of a liquid product is more flexible and manageable . Finally, opting for a mixed cycle also allowed us to make production more sustainable , since we eliminated a polymerization phase, reducing the related energy cost. Not to mention the greater production speed .
Today, with this painting cycle combined with the mechanical shot blasting pre-treatment to clean the piece and at the same time give a predetermined surface roughness of 30 Microns suitable for guaranteeing paint adhesion, we effortlessly exceed 2,000 hours of resistance in a salt spray chamber ” Fabrizio Abello, Plant manager of Bucher Municipal, explained to IPCM.
Eurotherm’s manual “box” painting system
The reactivity of production, the operational flexibility of the systems, automation and digitalisation were priorities for the company and it is with these characteristics that we provided them with a manual painting system to replace the old step-by-step in-line system. Among the various requests, the new plant had to be able to double the production rate compared to the previous one, increasing management flexibility and energy saving.
The objectives achieved are the transition from two work shifts (including Saturdays) to a single work shift to process the same quantity of painted parts with a high saving in gas and electricity compared to the old in-line system.
All medium-small pieces can be shot blasted in the blasting machine , while the boxes in the pre-existing shot blasting machine refurbished by Eurotherm both from a software and mechanical point of view to lengthen it and connect it to the blowing station, can work in parallel.
The automatic pretreatment tunnel is used for cleaning all those pieces that cannot be shot blasted.
The current production cycle is as follows:
- Shot blasting with metal grit or 3-stage pretreatment (set up for 5);
- liquid galvanizing with drying in the cabin at 25°C;
- powder coating.
The maximum capacity for hanging pieces in the system is 2,200 kg with a maximum length of 7.5 m. The lifting stations with which the plant is equipped facilitate the loading and unloading of heavy pieces by the operators.
The application powder booth dedicated to the orange color RAL2011, the company color, is recoverable , while the one dedicated to the application of all the other colors requested by customers is disposable.
The system is built with an Industry 4.0 perspective and is equipped with inverters to regulate the kinetic energy of the abrasive projected by the centrifugal turbines (to avoid any deformations and damage to thin-walled carpentry), to manage the air flow rate of the cabins pressurized and for the pre-gelling of the powder in polymerization ovens.
The final result
“ The Eurotherm box concept with four cabins and three polymerization ovens gave us that flexibility and speed that an automatic in-line system could never have given us ” underlines Fabrizio Abello of Giletta Spa. “Based on the output request of the system we decide whether to use one or more ovens. Furthermore, having a double cabin allows us to use them two by two or all four at the same time during production peaks. Our goal was to have a technological but at the same time flexible system: Eurotherm fully satisfied this requirement ”
You can read the full interview in the latest issue of IPCM.
