Solutions

The Problems

We were given the task of solving a problem in painting a wide range of stainless-steel screws for one of the largest manufacturers and suppliers of fasteners in Germany. The company had used manual labor to paint the screws, which is expensive and, more importantly, inconsistent in the quality of the coating. Additional problems were that the throughput of some screws was low (some batches as low as 5,000).

The Solution

The detail on the screw heads and the low volume would not suit powder coating. The machine incorporates a sandblasting station, which pre-blasts the screws before painting where this is a requirement for stainless steel screws.

Once blasted and cleaned, the screws are conveyed to a storage area, fitted with a hopper elevator. The hopper elevator would load screws to go through processes that include a gravity track to a pneumatic “loading head.”

The head would load the screws to a specially designed conveyor system. Once loaded, the screws will be wet as they would be painted with various paint nozzles. A pre-heat oven is used to remove any excess fumes.

The second oven then bakes the paint to the screws. Due to the size of the screw, a specially designed conveyor system turns the conveyor chain through 90 degrees temperatures to remove the screws from the chain. The screws are offloaded onto a floor-mounted conveyor and transferred to the customer’s tote bin via a belt elevator.