The powder symposium in Dresden opened the lecture season in the surface industry from February 8 to 9, 2024. According to the organizers, around 300 visitors came to Dresden, including many participants from Switzerland and Austria. According to the organizer Dr. Thomas Herrmann, there were around 180 users among the participants. The industry exhibition was also well booked with 50 exhibitors and was a popular point of contact for those interested in the individual topics, and not just during the breaks.
20 presentations and several panel discussions
Sustainability, energy efficiency and the CO2 footprint were very much to the fore in many of the presentations, even more so than in previous years. For example, the presentation on a new powder coating plant at Nanocoat, a contract coater that was only founded in 2022, showed interesting possibilities of today's plant technology and control systems in this regard. A wide range of measures were implemented here, from plastic chambers in the pre-treatment system to low-temperature chemistry and low-temperature powder coatings through to comprehensive digitalization of the system. The burner technology, which can work with both electricity and gas and is prepared for the use of hydrogen in the future, must also be regarded as contemporary.
Impressive innovations in the field of application technology
There were also a number of innovations in the field of application technology, and here it was perhaps already clear that this is an even year with PaintExpo and many manufacturers are trying to present innovations here. In addition to a new, further developed dense-phase powder pump, a Swiss application manufacturer presented a concept for dramatically shortening the powder changeover time once again. Even if the space-optimized combination of two powder centers is very complex, it can pay off in corresponding applications.
Disadvantages of the injector could be a thing of the past
Another application manufacturer presented a powder volume flow control system, which is designed to ensure that the dosing and conveying air is automatically adjusted despite wear of the catch nozzle in the injector, so that the same amount of powder emerges from the guns over the entire service life with the same system parameters.
Read more details about the most interesting presentations and topics in the detailed follow-up report in issue 4/2024 (April issue) of the magazine for surface technology. You will also soon find a video report on the Dresden Powder Symposium on mo-TV with interviews with speakers, associations and institutes. At the end, the organizer Dr. Hermann reported very positive feedback and was very satisfied with the course of the event and visibly positively surprised at how many possibilities and concepts have recently been developed and implemented to make powder coating more energy-efficient and resource-saving.