Investing with an eye on the future

At the new site, a leading application technology manufacturer is building a new pilot plant with a highly flexible shuttle system. In the first construction phase, a pilot plant for wet paint systems was built and recently put into operation. An extension for powder coating systems will follow in 2023.

The new wet paint pilot plant of Sames Kremlin GmbH in Erftstadt has a highly flexible concept and is geared to the challenges of the future. With the new technical center, the application technology manufacturer intends to further expand its German site and tap additional market potential in wet paint coating. The portfolio of Sames Kremlin GmbH includes manual as well as automatic spray guns, nozzles, high-rotation atomizers and color change systems including pump technologies. In addition, the design of application technology for entire painting robot lines is one of the company's core competencies. The services offered range from training courses and process applications to troubleshooting for wet paint and powder coatings. The system technology used is able to reproduce the painting process and the conditions in the customer's plant to a high degree. This is because Afotek's development engineers have adapted this facility specifically to the needs of the application manufacturer's customers in order to be able to simulate a wide range of application cases. In the new pilot plant, tests are possible with components up to 1,500 mm long, 500 mm wide and 1,000 mm high and with a maximum component weight of 125 kilograms.

Broadly designed wet paint pilot plant

In construction stage 1, the pilot plant for wet paint application was initially built and recently put into operation. The target group for the new pilot plant includes not only the processing industry, automotive manufacturers and tier's, but also contract painters and paint manufacturers. The floor area is around 55 square meters and includes various components from Afotek, including the TSP 2,000 dry spray booth, a flash-off room with drying function at room temperature, and the ASF conveyor system, which is designed as a semi-automatic system. The product carriers can automatically reverse in front of the dry spray booth and stop if necessary. Feeding for coating and loading of the flash-off zone are performed manually. Workpieces are also loaded and unloaded manually upstream of the TSP spray booth or in the buffer store upstream of the flash-off zone in the magazine on the conveyor system. The dry spraying booth is silenced and the required supply air is introduced into the filter ceiling in front of the TSP by a separate supply air unit. The pilot plant is designed so that even three-coat finishes, for example consisting of primer, basecoat and topcoat, can be applied and dried with intermediate ventilation. Aluminum and glass elements visually round off the technical design. The interior of the pilot plant can be viewed from the outside and can be entered through a separate glass swing door, ensuring that the test area forms a sealed clean room within the pilot plant, which meets very high quality requirements. There is the possibility to install any lifting devices and robots for the application of the coating in order to achieve a high flexibility as well as a high practical relevance. Thus it is possible to test all coating systems of Sames Kremlin together with the customer for his application. In order to develop further market potential and to meet the increasing demand for environmentally friendly powder coating applications, the realization of a powder pilot plant is planned in the second expansion stage. This is to be commissioned in 2023 and connected to the existing wet paint application - an area of 55 square meters has also been planned for this. The flexible ASF conveyor technology from Afotek, which can be expanded at any time, will connect the two pilot plants, creating two spatially separate but intralogistically connected plants with a total area of 110 square meters. Both the powder technology room and the wet paint technology room represent separate functional rooms. Priority is to be given to operating the areas on a single-sort basis. Retrofits and additional plant expansions are possible at any time, since the ASF conveyor system can be adapted to almost any room.

Concept of the powder pilot plant

The powder pilot plant will consist of a powder spray booth, a powder baking oven and a buffer storage for cooling the components. The powder baking oven will be equipped with an Afotek-designed blow-out floor to ensure the best possible air distribution and uniform temperature distribution in the oven for optimum baking results. The buffer storage will comprise four bays, and an attractive aluminum front with glass elements will also visually enhance this plant. The use of a wide range of lifting equipment and robots will also be possible in the future powder technology center. In Afotek's patented, highly flexible ASF conveyor system, the conveyor system's drives are located on the rails at specific intervals. In conventional conveyor technologies, goods are transported by means of a centrally driven conveyor chain that pulls components through systems and stations at identical conveying speeds.

ASF conveyor technology with highly flexible shuttle system.

But manual movements are also possible. The workpieces are suspended from individual 1.70 m long transport shuttles that can be moved in any desired direction - independently of each other, with positional accuracy and at different speeds. This enables variable process speeds and thus machining cycle times within the overall system and helps to increase the efficiency of the individual process steps, reduce process costs and achieve faster throughput times. The ASF is based on a fully modular rail system made of anodized aluminum profiles, which can be used to realize a wide variety of plant layouts in almost any size. Cross-travel carriages allow the shuttles to be moved at a 90-degree angle to the conveying direction. Adjustments and capacity expansions are possible at any time by increasing the number of shuttles. The design of the system without transport chains not only significantly increases flexibility, but also availability. The subsequent direct connection to prefabrication, assembly stations or other upstream or downstream logistics is also possible. For example, pre- or post-processing stations or buffers can be retrofitted without affecting ongoing production. The ASF is a very low-maintenance system that requires no grease, oil or other lubricants. Time-consuming and cost-intensive work such as chain changes or chain tensioning is therefore eliminated. What's more, the system prevents lubricants from dripping down, making it suitable for applications in a clean room. The extremely low-maintenance conveyor technology increases the availability of the system compared to conventional systems. The modular design also means that only a limited stock of spare parts is required.

A pilot plant for diverse and application-oriented trials

Another elementary advantage of the transport system is the ability to pass over interruptions of up to 250 mm within the conveyor rail, thus avoiding, for example, static openings within the gate wings at the furnaces and minimizing heat losses. In summary, the ASF system offers the possibility to realize very flexible processes with regard to part and material variety, even for batch size 1. Accordingly, the shuttle conveyor technology enables a flexible material flow within the entire coating process. With the well thought-out system concept, the new pilot plant opens up a highly flexible and application-oriented test procedure, whether it is a matter of optimizing the process parameters for existing or new coating systems, new products or even new application technology.

Afotek Anlagen für Oberflächentechnik GmbH www.afotek.de

Sames-Kremlin GmbH www.sames-kremlin.com