SCANDINAVIA’S MOST AESTHETIC, STATE-OF-THE-ART POWDER COATING LINE WITH ADVANCED ROBOT APPLICATION

Painting Line Designed to Support Varying Items and Frequent Color Changes

– A final coating quality that meets the customer’s expectations is always our starting point when designing a line like this. Further, Bramidan had some specific requirements to the process, which were a desire for short lead time, frequent color changes, continuously varying items and future-proof, energy efficient processes, explains Technical Manager from Moldow A/S, Lars Holm, and he continues:

– Based on that, we designed a state of the art line which taylors processes in the pre-treatment, powder booth, ovens and cooling zones to the specific needs. Further, through our cooperation with RobNor, Bramidan received the required robot solution, which includes Virtual Reality-based programming.

Being the heart of the line, the powder coating booth is located in the middle of the paint hall surrounded by large glass windows. Around the perimeter of the hall, the parts are transported on the red conveyor, from the loading zone, to the pre-treatment tunnel, drying oven and cooling zone before the powder application. After powder coating, the parts are transported to the curing oven and cooling zone before unloading.

– Since the sizes and shapes of the parts vary continuously in the same line, it takes accurate, uniform powder application and precise air and temperature management in the curing oven. Further to that, frequent color changes was a necessity for Bramidan. For that, a special cleaning station inside the booth was designed where the robots are cleaned quickly and efficiently before changing to the next color.

– We now have a coating line that is able to do 100% of what we wanted in relation to lead time, color changes and efficiency, Henrik Dueholm Madsen explains. He also adds that it is important that the line is aesthetically pleasing in its appearance.

Highly Automated and High-tech Powder Application

The powder coating robots play a crucial role in the plant as they are responsible for the actual powder application. Frequent color changes, precise one gun application and offline programming with Virtual Reality (VR) were essential requirements.

The robots and the powder application technology was supplied by Swedish RobNor AB, who is a northern European dealer of ABB’s robots. RobNor’s focus is primarily on the surface treatment process.

– The robots are programmed via our software, ABB RobotStudio, together with VR. This saves Bramidan an incredible amount of time, in fact up to two days per product, which equates to a saving of about 80% compared to traditional programming. The operator is able to program offline with VR and then perform a simulation to ensure that no problems arise when the robots run the program in real life, explains Pelle Andersson from RobNor.

– Very precise application of the powder was a necessity. This is exactly what we can deliver with Nordson’s technology, which, with their pump and gun technology, provides sufficient capacity from one gun per robot. Lakteknik A/S is Nordson’s Scandinavian dealer, and they have contributed with practical expertise and a local presence. Two important criteria to meet customer expectations.

As the parts are loaded onto a conveyor boom, color information and a program number is entered, which is then linked to the boom ID in a database. When the boom arrives at the powder booth after completed pre-treatment, the ID of the boom is scanned, and the linked information is sent to the robots.

The two main colors, yellow and gray, the robots get from two large big bags, while the other six colors come from buckets in the powder kitchen, which is located just outside the booth. The powder coating booth is ventilated with air, which is distributed through filters in the ceiling and sucked through the floor. After that, the remaining powder particles are filtered from the air in a Moldow cartridge filter.