Powder coating: Suction, not masking

Customer:	Amazone
Extracted material:	Powder coating
Industry:	Surface technology
Vacuum cleaner:	Compact DustEx DA 1300 M vacuum cleaner with direct drive

Floor finishing, sowing technology, manures and crop protection: Amazone is an international market leader in these agricultural machinery sectors. The company produces its products in nine plants, and exports around 80% of them.

Problem

Amazone manufactures machines for large-scale sowing technology at a new plant near Odenburg. The machines are powder-coated, and Amazone’s managers were looking for an economical alternative to screw hole wear before the powder is applied. Typically, the holes are closed with plugs and masked. However, both processes require a large amount of manual labour before, and especially after coating.

Solution

The idea came from a powder application team. After a painting process, the drill holes are simply vacuumed out. A direct-drive Ruwac vacuum cleaner type DA 1300 M (Ex zone 22) was purchased for this task.

The vacuuming step was easy to integrate into the manufacturing flow. The vacuum cleaner operator could choose from multiple specialised nozzles that fit precisely into the different drill holes and that were manufactured or selected for this application. One typical component, for instance, contains eight drill holes, and three different nozzles are needed to clean them.