Powder coating makes your life more colourful
Powder coating makes your life more colourful
A powder coating control system comprising a plurality of gun controls associated with a like plurality of powder spray guns. Each of the gun controls stores a plurality of presets spray parameters. Each of the gun controls responds to part identification signals and part position signals to select in real time one of the stored presets of spray parameters and trigger its respective powder spray gun ON and OFF to apply a powder coating to the moving part in accordance with the selected set of spray parameters. The control system further permits a gun purge cycle to be programmed either before or after the powder coating process is executed. The control system automatically initializes and brings each of the gun controls to an operable state on-line with the system control.
A powder coating system for applying a powder coating to a part comprising:
a plurality of powder spray guns disposed with respect to the part;
at least one powder source supplying powder to said plurality of spray guns through a plurality of hoses connected between the at least one powder source and the spray guns;
a plurality of flow regulators, each flow regulator varying the flow of powder through one of the hoses;
a plurality of controls, each of the controls including a processor connected to a memory storing at least one set of spray parameters, each of the flow regulators being connected to one of the controls and each of the controls selecting the one set of spray parameters to vary the operation of the associated regulator and control the flow of powder through one of the hoses; and
a communications network in electrical communication with the plurality of controls for providing data to the plurality of controls.
Apowder coating system sprays an electrostatically charged airborne powder within an enclosure or booth containing the part or article to be coated. The electrostatic potential between the powder and the article causes the powder to be attracted to and move into contact with the surface of the article. The deposited powder is then heated so that it flows and hardens on the surface on which it has been deposited.
The present invention relates to two areas of powder spray control. First is the selection and control of certain spray parameters, for example, the powder flow air pressure, the atomizing air pressure and pattern air pressure, if required. In addition, with corona type spray guns, an electrostatic voltage is selected and supplied by an internal power supply. The second area of powder spray control is gun triggering, that is, when the spray gun is turned ON and OFF, in relation to parts traveling through the spray booth. In the most basic systems, the air pressures and electrostatic voltage are controlled by manually setting respective pressure regulators and a power supply, and the gun triggering is also manually controlled.
Some systems have been developed that automate the gun triggering. For example, the "SMART SPRAY.RTM." gun controller which is manufactured and sold by Nordson Corporation of Amherst, Ohio, the assignee of the present invention, uses a microprocessor based gun controller in combination with manually set pressure regulators to automatically control the spray gun triggering. The gun controller operates with photodetectors in the spray booth to provide gun triggering in different spray booth zones. Either a conveyor feedback transducer or control timer is used with the photodetectors to detect the presence of a part as well as its front and rear edges as it travels through the booth, and the gun controller triggers the gun ON and OFF in response to the photodetectors sensing part presence. However, the spray parameters remain constant unless they are manually changed by the operator.
In another aspect, the invention includes a method of applying apowder coating on a part moving with respect to powder spray guns by storing a plurality of presets of spray parameters in each of a number of gun controls connected to a like number of powder spray guns. The part to be coated is detected and the appropriate gun controls are activated to select a preset of gun operating parameters as a function of detecting the part. The above method can be implemented by each of the gun controls selecting different presets of spray parameters in response to detecting different physical characteristics of one or more of the parts or portions of the parts. In a further aspect of the above method, the different presets of spray parameters are detected in response to detecting changes of position and different physical characteristics of the one or more parts moving with respect to the powder spray guns.
In another embodiment of the invention, a gun purge cycle is programmable and automatically executed as part of a standard powder spraying process. With a tribo gun, in which the electrostatic charge is created by the static electricity of the powder flowing through the spray gun, it has been found that purging is desirable prior to the execution of a powder spraying process. With the present invention, a purge-on cycle may be programmed to automatically purge only the spray gun after the part has been detected but prior to the part arriving at the spray gun. Further, at the end of a powder spraying process, a purge-off cycle may be programmed to use pressurized air to automatically clean the powder dispensing hose and the spray gun of excess powder. Consequently, the invention provides an automatic powder spray cycle that prevents the surging and spitting of undispensed powder at the start of powder dispensing cycles. Therefore, another advantage of the invention is that, for the first time, a powder dispensing process can be programmed that changes powder coating spray parameters in real time.
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