Every metallic material will be painted at the final stage of production in order to protect it from corrosion. In an automobile industry, the finished metals are painted with different colors for attracting the customers. In olden days, this painting process was done by two methods such as spray coating and immersion & flow coating methods.
Spray Coating method:
In the spray coating method, a spray gun is used to coat the paints on a metal. It is done manually by the well skilled human labors. This process can be performed by three different ways, namely:
- Airless spray method.
- Air spray method.
- Electrostatic spray method.
Immersion and Flow Coating methods:
The operation of immersion and flow coating methods are almost similar to each other. Both these methods are very simple techniques in the painting process. In the immersion method, a metal is dropped into a paint tank and taken out. The surplus of paints is sent back to the tank. The metals that are to be painted are placed on top of the paint tank in the flow coating method. In this process, the paint is made to flow on the metal for painting.
Reason for using robot in painting operation:
The spray coating method is the harmful process in the painting operation. It causes a lot of dangers to the human workers such as:
- Production of fire during the combination of flammable paint and air.
- Emission of toxic fumes and mist in the environment.
- Possibility of cancer disease.
- Noise from the spray gun nozzle will cause hearing problems.
To get rid out of all the above hazards, the Spray Painting Robot was introduced to perform this process. This robot attaches a spray gun on its wrist and acts like an end effector. The operation is programmed by a human with the help of teach – through methods. A robot must have several necessities such as two or more program storage, continuous path control, manual lead through programming method, and hydraulic drive system for carrying out this process. This type of robots is mostly used in automobile industries for painting the exterior and interior parts of a car.
Before using a robot in the spray painting application, some of the significant parameters should be checked for achieving consistent quality of painting like air & fluid pressure, flow rate, specific gravity, viscosity, appropriate temperature, and more. Most importantly, it should be cleaned sequentially for gaining high consistency.
Advantages of Spray Painting Robot:
- High consistency
- Better productivity
- Increased labors safety
- Less power consumption
- Minimizes the use of paint