Robots improve painting quality and productivity

ABB robotic technology is helping the Yamaha Motor Co European subsidiary, MBK Industrie, improve energy savings and deliver 100 per cent quality in the painting process of outboard motors

The solution, ready for production in the middle of 2008, ensures the company meets its own stringent requirements including reduced labour costs, energy and paint consumption and improved health and safety levels at its factory in Saint Quentin, France.

The French manufacturer of scooters, motorbikes and outboard motors, wanted to provide enhanced environmental protection for its employees and the plant by reducing emissions and improving energy savings.

In order to do this, the company approached ABB with its requirements and ABB identified how best these could be implemented.

The first step on the MBK new production line was to implement automated technology to prepare the surface of the parts for painting.

This approach has enabled drying temperatures to be decreased from 150C to 90C and drying cycle times to be cut by 40 per cent.

At this stage in the production line, the parts are ready to be painted.

ABB has implemented three paint booths, complete with three ABB IRB580 compact paint robots, offering a highly flexible, cost-effective and accurate paint robot system.

By implementing anti-dust protection in the overhead conveyor, ABB has ensured consistent quality for painting operations.

Utilising robots has resulted in the paint transfer efficiency increasing from 17% to 40%.

Once the part has been painted, it is placed in a convection oven for drying and then moved onto the cleaning zone where the part is checked for marks and dust.

The new MBK solution delivers the lowest dust pollution on parts, ensuring the highest quality of finish, every time.

Many manufacturers have already transformed production with robotics, as industrial spray painting is ideal for such technology.

In traditional manufacturing plants, as much as 60% of the paint used by manufacturers is wasted during production.

For this solution, the paint booth is the most crucial area for optimisation, and one that ABB has successfully enhanced with the development of the air recirculation system, combined with a state of the art energy saving process.

Often the paints used in traditional production lines contain toxic ingredients that are hazardous to human health and the environment.

The pollution generated can exceed that of a the engine emissions from a car, generated over the lifetime of the vehicle.

In such systems, the air, which has been mixed with the used solvents, is simply discarded through a chimney.

The ABB solution helps to avoid this by ensuring the polluted air is not vented outside.

Instead, in the final stage of production, it can be 90 per cent recycled in the booth.

The recirculation system not only allows air re-utilisation, but also enables the final polluted 10% to be monitored and maintained within safe limits, with a specialised air duct.

By extracting the airflow through a Regenerative Thermal Oxidiser (RTO), ABB ensures all hazardous toxins, discharged in industrial process exhausts, are destroyed.

This provides the plant with energy savings of up to 30%, and a further 9% reduction in the total annual operating cost of the paint process.

The new production line is also helping to save valuable space in high value manufacturing areas as the solution is compact and requires a much smaller footprint than that of the older line.

Laurent Frayssinet, Manager for the ABB Lead Centre Paint Process Automation in France, comments: "This robotic solution from ABB increases productivity and saves energy with less pollution.

Our customers benefit from the very high level of engineering expertise gained from the ABB involvement in paint applications around the world.

By helping manufacturers to enhance their own production lines we can ensure great productivity, business success and reduced environmental impact".

By combining air recirculation, solvent disposal and energy savings with full compliance with all environmental regulations, ABB is helping MBK Industrie deliver substantial energy savings of up to 30% when compared with existing production lines.

This solution not only saves energy but is helping increase productivity, achieve paint savings and improve health and safety in the workplace.

For more information about the potential benefits of integrating robots into your production process, please contact ABB Robotics, or use the Processingtalk Reader Response Service.

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