Producers of fasteners are typically required to paint the fastener heads to match the color palettes of metal siding, roofing, decking and other related construction applications. The paint is typically a solvent-borne 2 part epoxy either sprayed on the fastener or in some cases the fastener is dipped into the paint.

Engineering Discovery at customer site:

Fast, fast and faster. Painting is the bottleneck in customers’ production facility. Customer is wishing to make custom color paint for 2 existing manual spray booths as well as a new robotic painting line. They wish to have the paint made real-time, as needed for each of the paint zones.
System must be Class 1 / Division 1 compatible for installation due to this being solvent borne materials. The hazardous material room at the customer site is too small to house the automated system.
Must be highly accurate and repeatable. Some small batch mixes have colorants which are highly concentrated (hyper-toners) and are in amounts as low as 0.1 grams in the formula.
Most of each formula batch consists of a “base” which is either white or a clear and is approximately 80% or more of the volume, with up to 10 colorants are available to add to the base to produce the final color formula.

Our Solution:
The Volumetrix

The Volumetrix system was comprised of a 12 Nozzle Dispense station positioned above a high resolution scale. Materials are supplied to the Dispense station by Stainless Steel canister wings which have ingredient wells (of various capacities), paddle agitators and electrically driven positive displacement pumps of various sizes. The entire system is housed in an NFPA approved “Mix Room” with door and viewing window with an air blower interlock for exhaust vent to atmosphere. Clean, safe dedicated Mix Room for fully automated paint tinting.

Benefits:

Fast. The Volumetrix is capable of dispensing formulas at 30 secs. per gallon.
2 Full time paint mixer positions were eliminated.
Confidence in the Volumetrix has eliminated the need for spray out “color checks”.
Paint made on demand for all 3 paint zones.
50% reduction in paint usage.
No inventory of unused paint colors needed. Volumetrix produces right amount in real-time.
Easily exceeded customers’ ROI calculations.