Optimization of electrostatic powder coat cure oven process: A capstone senior design research project

Abstract

Abstract This paper describes one successful example of a capstone senior design research project that deals with optimization of the electrostatic powder coat cure process. Optimizing any manufacturing process provides a company with extensive benefits obtained through increased productivity, reduced manufacturing costs, and quicker time to market. Along with the explicit production cost benefits, a company will also reap the benefits of a decreased environmental impact and increased market competitiveness accruing from increased productivity. Therefore, companies are incentivized to continually improve, and optimize their production processes. One such process that many products, throughout numerous industries, go through is the painting process. While painting a product can aid in easily identifying certain brands (e.g. John Deere green, Caterpillar yellow, New Holland blue, International Harvester red, etc.), the main purpose of providing a painted surface is to protect the product from environmental corrosion, and wear in addition to providing a drastically longer life cycle to the product. One of the most important steps of the painting process is the curing of the paint on the surface of the product. This is normally done through an industrial oven set at appropriate temperatures and times depending on the paints used and the products to be painted. Using DOE, ANOVA, and other statistical analysis tools for data collection and analysis, a cure oven set at 450 °F for 40 minutes was optimized to 450 °F for 38 minutes. This provides a 5% decrease in both process time and natural gas usage while continuing to maintain the same level of quality. This demonstrates the effectiveness of DOE tools and statistical analysis of collected data coupled with the principles of process optimization in increasing productivity and reducing overall production costs.