PaintExpo fulfills stricter requirements for coatings

Oberboihingen, Germany – Greater demands are being placed on painted surfaces. Key aspects include improved quality, as well as increasing individuality and sustainability. In order to remain competitive, companies with in-house painting operations have to react to these requirements quickly and effectively despite rising cost pressure. Facts about new products, further developments, and trends in industrial coating technology are necessary, and will be presented at PaintExpo at the Karlsruhe Exhibition Centre from the April, 19-22, 2016.

As a key technology, coating plays a decisive role in almost all fields of industrial manufacturing and in the production of consumer goods. A variety of functional and decorative requirements need to be fulfilled for various surfaces. Whether metals, plastics, wood, wooden materials, glass, or composite materials need to be coated, the requirements stipulate high-quality, resource-conserving, flexible, environmentally sound and, at the same time, economically efficient coating processes. The exhibitors at PaintExpo will present new solutions and further developments throughout the entire process sequence for liquid painting, powder coating, and coil coating.

Ecological, efficient pre-treatment
The transition period for the use of chrome(VI)-containing products in the EU will expire on Sept. 21, 2017, which is still used in some cases for the pre-treatment of aluminum and zinc. To date it’s impossible to say whether or not chromium trioxide and other chromium compounds included in annex 14 of the REACH regulation will be authorized. Due to the fact that the changeover necessitates time-consuming, costly measures, advance information about conversion of an existing pre-treatment system or the design of a new one is necssary. PaintExpo in an ideal show to answer these issues because suppliers of chromium-free systems and equipment will be on hand. Attendees will be able to learn about conventional pre-treatment processes for metallic substrates such a as iron and zinc phosphatizing, as well as nano-ceramic systems. Among others, products based on renewable raw materials for the cleaning and pre-treatment of components made of steel, iron, and aluminum will be presented.

Simplifying painting processes
The optimization of energy and resource efficiency is still a high-priority issue for companies with in-house painting operations. Developments that contribute to simplifying the utilized processes play an important role. These developments include single-coat systems, because if the same results can be obtained with a single layer of paint that previously required several, significant material and energy savings can be achieved. A further trend where solutions will be showcased involves liquid paints and powdered enamels which, in addition to their protective and decorative features, fulfil other functions as well, for example, self-healing, self-cleaning, antimicrobial, temperature compensating, ice-resistant, and photocatalytic paint layers.

In the field of powder coating, ultra-thin powdered enamels permit significantly reduced consumption thanks to reduced layer thicknesses – as low as 25µm depending on the color. Where efficient overspray scrubbing is concerned, demand is continuously increasing for dry scrubbing systems. These solutions make use of brushes, electrostatics, powder and special carton designs for the effective, energy-saving and resource-conserving scrubbing of overspray.

Coating technology 4.0
After the steam engine, the assembly line, and computer technology, Industry 4.0 – the fourth industrial revolution – is targeting coating technology as well. More of an evolution based on modular, browser-based manufacturing execution systems (MES) will be presented at PaintExpo. They network the factory throughout the entire manufacturing process (horizontally), as well as through all process levels (vertically). This permits integrated data acquisition, analysis and graphic display in real-time. Production and logistics processes are thus made fully transparent on the one hand, and data can be accessed from anywhere in the world at any time. As a result, processes can not only be controlled, monitored, and optimized from a PC at the workplace, but rather from a laptop, a tablet, or smartphone at any location.

Source: PaintExpo