Process and quality control for industrial painting lines

Introduction

Finna Sensors™ has developed a solution to help industrial paint lines for a variety of applications including lumber, cladding, engineered wood, doors, windows and decorative moldings. It is an industry that has grown rapidly as builders seek pre-primed and pre-painted material for faster construction projects. As the industry has grown to meet this demand, problems in the process with paint control has led to our proprietary solution to address the final quality of the product.

The Problem

Paint lines face a number of problems as they scale production to meet growing demand in the various industries.

• Incoming wood material can be too wet for coatings to adhere properly
• Paint can be unevenly applied across wood material, causing variations in product quality
• Paint spray nozzle issues can go undetected, thus causing rejected material and profit loss for the manufacturer
• Excess paint is applied to wood material, costing the manufacturer critical margin

Our Solution

Finna Sensors offers a comprehensive solution to overcome the many challenges faced by manufacturers with paint lines. To check incoming material, both the MC Pro 2400 and MC Pro 2500 sensors can detect wood that is too wet to be painted. These boards can be dropped out for further processing to avoid later rejection. Sensors for both temperature and humidity are sold to control the drying process. These additional sensors help optimize the entire quality control process. Additionally, NIR sensors are used to monitor the paint thickness on the wood. This sensor will look for areas/streaks with too little or too much applied paint – often caused by faulty spray nozzles. All of these sensors work in real-time with measurements taken multiple times per second. The data to collected and sent to a plant system for alarming and analysis.

Benefits

• Detect variation in paint thickness immediately after application to avoid expensive errors
• Optimize paint usage to maximize profit
• Eliminate downtime to manually weigh wood to check paint thickness
• Increase data gathering to enable better quality control and production efficiency

Conclusion

Finna Sensors and its partner network have installed multiple installations world-wide yielding increased quality, reduced downtime, increased profit and improved manufacturing efficiency. New installations are scheduled throughout the year with manufacturers realizing quick payback due to lower waste.

Contact us for more information.