A new Eurotherm automatic liquid coating system has gone fully operational in Italy’s productive Northeast.
It is a complete automatic system for the liquid coating of small/medium size plastic components.
The client: Effedue srl
The Italian company Effedue srl has twenty-five years’ experience in surface treatment and coating for household appliances, sports, furniture, lighting and automotive.
The company employs processes that comply with the quality standards IATF 16949:2016 (certification for the coating of plastic surfaces with liquid paints) and ISO 9001:2015 for the following fields of application: painting of plastic, metal and glass parts, pad printing and laser engraving.
Following the client’s production requirements, we designed and built a complete, automated system for the preparation and coating of plastic elements.
Eurotherm’s automatic liquid coating system for Effedue srl
Our plant responds to the need of managing automatically an entire production line, corresponding to a working process in three main phases which is pre-established and cannot be modified (except for the setting and control of chemical and working parameters).
The plant allows the superficial treatment and painting of plastic elements of small and medium dimensions (max 1800 mm for one of the sides of the processed shape).
With the exception of loading and unloading the conveyors at the beginning and end of the process, which is carried out manually, each phase – as well as the passage to the next – is automated. The phases and parameters are controlled by the control panels.
The technological process the system has been made for involves three main phases:
- Cleaning of the pieces using carbon dioxide, flaming and ionization: flaming makes the surface to be coated rough and “irregular”, while ionization provides the base for the adhesion of the coatings.
- Preparation of the base coat with primer.
- Base coating with liquid paint. The coating is carried out by using a gun mounted on a robotic arm.
Between the primer coating and the final coating, a 24-minute flash-off at 40°C is carried out. Following coating, a second flash-off (16 minutes at 40°C), baking inside an oven at 90°C for 56 minutes and two cooling phases (forced and natural) complete the work cycle.
The system was also designed to be integrated with the production spaces of the company. Even without any particular physical limitations, the logical and compact spatial arrangement of a multiphase system does reflect positively on its performance.
A note on process sustainability and the health and safety of the operators
As always, we have a keen eye on the environmental impact of our working processes. Also in this case, any potentially harmful emission is captured and conveyed to the corresponding purification systems.
As far as operator safety is concerned, the automatic liquid coating system is equipped with emergency lockout buttons: work is resumed only after a manual start-up operation.
