As industrial manufacturers and aircraft finishers strive to stay competitive amidst production challenges, such as faster lead times and a shrinking workforce, they find themselves needing to achieve more with fewer resources.
Incorporating painting robots into your finishing operation offers several advantages, including freeing up valuable floor space, boosting productivity, and enhancing finish quality. This allows workers to transition into more strategic roles. Over time, painting robots have proved to be a cost-effective solution, offering increased precision, reliability, and the capability to operate continuously.
Here are five essential considerations before implementing a painting robot in your industrial or aerospace paint booth.
Painting robots offer flexible mounting options within spray booths, with three main configurations: floor-mounted, wall-mounted, or ceiling-mounted.
Floor-mounted painting robots, although space-intensive, are relatively straightforward to integrate into a spray booth compared to their wall or ceiling-mounted counterparts. Wall-mounted robots require designing a mounting position within the booth’s wall, with an external column and vertical base plate installed. Similarly, ceiling-mounted robots necessitate designing a hole in the booth’s ceiling and bolting the robot to overhead beams.
For businesses handling large products, wall or ceiling-mounted robots may be preferable due to space considerations. However, if space is not an issue, floor-mounted robots are the simplest to integrate, avoiding the need to cut holes in the booth’s structure.
Platinum Finishing Systems (PFS) emphasizes the importance of designing booth walls or ceilings to accommodate painting robots, as the addition of robots significantly alters the booth’s structural dynamics.
The role of painting robots within spray booths varies based on the specific application. In low -low-production automated batch processes, workers typically load and unload parts onto a turntable while the painting robot applies material inside the booth. Alternatively, parts may be shuttled across the booth, with workers loading and unloading them before and after they are sprayed by the robot.
In high-production continuous processes, such as painting car bodies, products move through the booth while painting robots spray from multiple angles. For smaller parts, a conveyor system may carry them past an overhead painting robot, which sprays towards the part and the filtered exhaust chamber behind it. Each of these options has advantages and disadvantages depending on the application.
Recirculating paint booths offer a significant reduction in energy consumption compared to traditional industrial paint booths by recirculating up to 90 percent of the exhausted air. This not only lowers energy usage but also decreases capital expenses, as the air handling and abatement equipment are downsized.
However, there are considerations regarding the reintroduction of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the booth during spray mode. VOCs can pose health hazards for painters, necessitating the use of high levels of personal protective equipment (PPE). In contrast, painting robots are unaffected by these hazards, as noted by Freels, who mentioned that robots are insensitive to VOCs in the booth. The main concern with robots is ensuring they operate within the maximum operating temperature, typically around 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Consequently, recirculating paint booths significantly reduces the amount of conditioned process air required, resulting in approximately a 40 percent decrease in energy consumption
Robots offer users the opportunity to enhance both quality and throughput, all while reducing both capital and operational expenditures. Their advanced technology allows for applicator movement (tip speed) surpassing any manufacturer’s specified limit. Equipped with high-speed, high-payload arms, robots facilitate heavier applicator or multiple applicator processes, enabling the application of more paint within the same operational space compared to manual painters. Moreover, their swift arm speeds contribute to faster repositioning times between parts, maximizing spray time.
One of the key advantages of painting robots lies in their consistent performance. Unlike humans, who may vary their coating thickness over time, robots maintain uniformity in each application. This consistency leads to cascading cost savings, including reduced rework, tighter film build tolerance, decreased paint and filter usage, and consequently, smaller exhaust (conditioned air) requirements.
This uniformity is particularly crucial when applying performance coatings like low observable coatings, commonly used in military aircraft and components. These coatings demand precise thicknesses and distribution across multiple applications. By programming robots to apply specific amounts of low-observable coating, efficiency is enhanced, and waste in the painting process is minimized.
Painting robots excel in finishing objects that pose challenges for manual painting, particularly when it comes to accessing difficult-to-reach areas. This advantage is especially pronounced when painting intricate, contoured surfaces such as those found on aircraft components.
For painting robots to achieve precise paint application across all areas of a component, the component must remain stationary and consistently positioned. This consideration must be conveyed early in the design process, as the paint booths for robots are custom and are designed to ensure maximum performance in congruence with robots.
Side downdraft spray booths provide superior airflow and reduce overspray contamination. Learn why they’re the best choice for auto refinishing and custom paintwork.
Semi-downdraft spray booths offer a balance of cost, efficiency, and paint quality. Learn how they improve auto refinishing and why they are a great option.
Full downdraft spray booths offer superior airflow, high-quality finishes, and better safety in auto refinishing. Learn how they work and why they are the best option.