Dürr has launched EcoProBooth, a new paint booth concept which combines interior and exterior painting in one box.
The new patent-pending paint booth by Dürr, EcoProBooth, allows maintenance and cleaning work on the application technology without having to halt production. It's part of Dürr's new "Paint shop of the future" concept which aims at increasing plant availability, in this case by integrating the service work into the process steps without having to interrupt production.
The energy consumption and CO2 emissions are reduced thanks to a maximum circulation rate of 95%. Also, interior and exterior painting is combined in a single workstation.
The paint booth, which is designed for 12 jobs per hour and a mix of bodies from compact cars to medium-sized SUVs, allows easy scaling according to changing quantities. The size and design of the box are standardized, so that conversions and extensions are possible without a knock-on effect on production in other box sections.
The box layout makes it possible to reduce material consumption due to smaller losses when changing colour. The colour changing process itself is minimized thanks to the division of the line into shorter sections, which makes it possible to distribute the painting jobs. This saves paint and detergent and thus reduces both costs and VOC emissions.
Three painting processes in a single booth
EcoPaintBooth also allows three painting processes (the interior and the two exterior applications) in a single booth.
Up to eight painting robots assisted by four Scara robots for opening the doors apply the paint to the body, both inside and outside.
Two of the previous three conveying operations are eliminated since the bodies stay in the booth and do not have to be conveyed from one booth to the next between the application processes.
The robots for the exterior painting can be cleaned while the other robots are applying the interior paint, and vice versa. The system of task distribution enables different application technology to be used in one booth for the exterior and interior painting.
Maintenance made easy
When a paint booth is in air recirculation mode, maintenance personnel cannot enter due to the hazardous solvents present in the air and to the risk of causing paint defects.
EcoProBooth paint booth provides a solution with service cubicles at each corner of the paint booth, which are continuously flushed with fresh air and can be entered at any time without risks. If a robot needs to be cleaned or maintained, it moves to the service cubicle and stretches its arm through a connecting window into the service area, where a worker can easily reach it.
Greater plant availability
To clean robots and carry out maintenance, usually production needs to be stopped. With EcoProBooth, atomizers can be cleaned and bell disks can be replaced during production without the worker having to enter the application area in the booth and without stopping the production.
Low energy consumption and CO2 emissions
While a classic dry separation system has a recirculated air to fresh air ratio of 80:20, in the EcoProBooth it is 95:5. Five percent fresh air is added to the process air to adhere to a safe margin to the lower explosion limit.
In the associated EcoDryScrubber dry separation system, the air is first purified to remove the paint particles and then reconditioned in a recirculating air unit assigned directly to the paint booth. The energy required to recondition the recirculating air is much lower than for conditioning fresh air from the outside, which generally differs greatly from the conditions in the booth. The maximum air recirculation rate thus keeps the energy consumption and the CO
2 emissions for conditioning as low as possible.