New powder coating operation simplifies
cleaning as it advances finishing quality
A New England commercial and residential heating manufacturer installs a new washer, conveyor, and
curing oven to accommodate one-step, no-rinse, no-heat cleaning.
Peggy Koop
Editor
he Roaring Twenties was a
hot decade of firsts: The first
highway, the first motel, the
first radio broadcast, the first television, the first sound movie, the first
person to swim 100 meters under a
minute (Johnny Weissmuller), the
first person to hit 60 home runs
(Babe Ruth, the Prince of Powders),
the first mass production of cars (the
Model T). But another first was to
heat up the nation in a different—
and very practical—way. John H.
Ehn invested in a business holding
several patents on finned-tube radiation—a new heat-transfer method.
T
dal-resistant security hydronic and
electric heaters for prisons, schools,
mental institutions, industrial plants,
and other high-abuse installations.
The company powder coats the flat
panels used for its line of custom
baseboard heaters, as well as some
mounting brackets, accessories,
caps, and joiners. Powder use isn’t
new at Vulcan. “We’ve been using
powder for a while,” said John Theofane, Vulcan’s facilities and special
projects manager. “We’ve been doing
wet paint, too. When I started here,
it was probably 60-40 in favor of
powder. In a few years, it turned into
probably about 95-5 powder. Now, we
don’t use any wet paint.”
One-step pretreatment is
“green”
To apply its powder, Vulcan has been
using 15-foot-long manual spray
booths—one reclaim and one spray-
Experimenting with heating railroad cars in 1920s, the inquisitive
Ehn proved that eight rows of oldfashioned bare steam pipe produced
the same heat output as a single row
of finned-tube radiation. As a result,
95 percent of all the country’s railroad cars were heated with Vulcan
finned-tube radiation. Building on
its success heating World War II era
barracks and factories, the company
revolutionized commercial and residential heating.
Acquired by Mestek in 1984, Vulcan
Radiator, South Windsor, Conn.,
today manufactures standard and
custom finned-tube enclosures for
the architectural market, and van-
Parts move through a single-stage, closed-loop washer where they’re sprayed
with biodegradable cleaning chemicals.
Copyright, CSC Publishing, Powder Coating
Case History
Architectural Powder Coating
That all changed in June last year
with the installation of Vulcan’s new
coating system, a project that germinated 3 years ago with a magazine
article about cleaning chemicals. “I
thought it was too good to be true,”
Theofane said, describing a one-step
cleaning system that requires no rinsing or heat. His curiosity tweaked, he
The company’s return on investment? “It paid for itself in
20 months,” the facilities manager said. About every 2 months,
a replenisher is added to the chemicals. The company spends
less on chemicals than it did on its previous cleaning method.
And the quality of finished product is much better than it was
with the previous method.
visited a plant using the chemicals
and brought sample parts. “They
were gracious enough to spray them
for me,” he said. “I brought them
back, and we found that coverage
was a lot better. The wraparound was
terrific. And what took us two operations, we could do in one operation.”
The one-step system is called Enviroprep from Ohio-based Calvary
Industries. The biodegradable materials are designed to replace iron
and zinc phosphates, zirconium, and
chromates. A solvent carrier cleans
and disperses soils and oils as resins
and other active materials deposit
on the part surface. Oils are crosslinked into the deposited film and
act as a plasticizer. The solvent evaporates to leave a dry, flexible, coatable surface. “It encapsulates the
oil,” Theofane said. “The molecular
structure of the chemical is finer
than oil. It captures the oil and when
it bakes off, it dries, and the oil will
never come through.”
Vulcan uses the chemicals in its new
single-stage, closed-loop washer, part
of the new system installation, done
by T&S Enterprises, Zephyrhills,
Fla. The chemicals are sprayed on
parts and allowed to sit on them for
11/2 to 2 minutes. The whole length
of the 80-foot-long washer has an
opening in the floor to recycle unused chemicals. “It just gets sprayed
on,” Theofane said. “It drips off, and
then it goes to dry.”
Drying is crucial. Vulcan shortened
its old 80-foot-long curing oven by 30
feet and installed it after the washer
to dry the parts. Parts go through air
knives and then the drying oven
before they’re powder-coated.
System installation includes
test samples
The company’s previous curing oven was shortened into a drying oven. Its new
curing oven, shown here, is gas-fired convection.
T&S Enterprises installed a new
gas-fired convection oven 150 feet
long. Parts are still powder coated
manually in Vulcan’s original reclaim and spray-to-waste booths.
Each booth is equipped with one
Copyright, CSC Publishing, Powder Coating
to-waste. For pretreatment, employees wiped parts with tack cloth or
sprayed it with a light solvent. “We
got the raw materials right from the
press-brake area all bent up and louvered, whatever needed to be done
to it,” Theofane said. “And we would
wipe it down before it went into the
powder booth. It would go on the
paint chain, go through the powder
booth, and out it would go.”
Vulcan Radiator manufactures a variety of
commercial heating systems.
corona-charging spray gun. The
company sprays polyurethane powder coatings in seven standard colors and can do special color requests
if necessary. It processes between
2,000 and 3,000 feet of parts in one
shift per day.
The new system also includes an
enclosed-track conveyor that is 560
feet long and runs at 8 feet per
minute. “We’re very happy with the
whole installation,” Theofane said.
“The three guys who they [T&S]
sent here just made everything fall
into place.”
Salt-spray and adhesion testing was
included in the installation quote.
“That was one of the interesting
The decision to install the
new system was made in
December 2008. In 6
months, the equipment was installed.
Vulcan ripped out the entire old system. When the new system was
installed, the company outsourced its
coating for about 4 to 5 weeks until
the system was done. “T&S came
in,” Theofane said. “They did a lot of
measuring, and they made a lot of
marks on the floor. And then all of a
sudden when they started moving
machinery in, everything sort of
popped into place.”
ROI in less than 2 years and
happy customers
The powder operation is about 200
feet long. It now includes packaging
right off of the line, capabilities Vulcan didn’t have on the old line. Five
people work on the line, which is the
same as the old system.
Vulcan’s return on investment (ROI)?
“It paid for itself in 20 months,” Theofane said. About every 2 months, a
replenisher is added to the chemicals.
Vulcan spends less on chemicals than
it did on its previous cleaning method.
And the quality of finished product is
much better than it was with the previous method, Theofane said.
The proof is ultimately at the hands
of Vulcan’s customers. “They’re happy
with it,” Theofane said. “We haven’t
had any complaints at all.”
PC
Editor’s note
For further reading on the topics discussed in this article, see Powder
Coating magazine’s Web site at
[www.pcoating.com]. Click on Article
Index and search by subject category.
Have a question? Click on Problem
Solving to submit one.
Pretreatment chemicals: Calvary
Industries, Fairfield, Ohio 513/8741113. [www.calvaryindustries.com]
Washer and oven systems: T&S
Enterprises, Zephyrhills, Fla. 813/7798024. [www.tse.us.com]
Copyright, CSC Publishing, Powder Coating
things that caught my eye
as far as T&S goes,” he said.
“They supplied all of that in
their quote without me asking for it. They showed typical panels that were washed
and sprayed, and gave us
salt-spray results, adhesion
testing, everything. The
overall service was appreciated. They did a good job.”