Planning a new powder paint coating line for home appliance production?

1. Spatial Planning: Reserve Space for Automation Upgrades Based on Home Appliance Characteristics

• Zoning for Product Categories: Divide the workshop into "large home appliance area" (refrigerators, washing machines) and "small home appliance area" (rice cookers, microwaves). The large product area adopts a wide-track suspended conveying system (track gauge 1.5m), reserving the robot working radius (≥2.5m) for home appliance automated powder paint coating lines to ensure 6-axis robots can cover the entire surface of workpieces; the small product area uses a double-layer turntable conveyor, with powder paint coating on the upper layer and return on the lower layer, increasing per-unit space capacity by 50%;
• Reserve Space for Environmental Equipment: Plan an independent area for home appliance coating environmental systems in the corner of the workshop, pre-laying waste gas pipelines and solid waste storage areas to avoid damaging the original layout during subsequent installation. After an appliance enterprise adopted this planning, it did not need large-scale renovation when adding automated equipment one year later, saving over 2 million yuan in costs.

2. Equipment Configuration: Balance Efficiency and Flexible Production with Home Appliance Automated Powder Paint Coating Lines

• Precise Adaptation to Home Appliance Structures: For the flat characteristics of refrigerator panels, a combination of "translational powder paint coating + laser thickness measurement" is used, controlling coating thickness deviation within ±3μm; for the curved structure of washing machine tubs, 3D visual scanning generates exclusive powder paint coating paths, and robots automatically adjust the spray gun angle (±15°) to avoid missing coating;
• Rapid Switching of Production Categories: Equipped with multi-color powder storage tanks (supporting 8 common colors) and automatic cleaning gun stations, home appliance automated powder paint coating lines can automatically call preset parameters when switching categories. For example, switching from powder paint coating silver refrigerator doors to black washing machine panels takes only 8 minutes, 73% more efficient than manual changeover (30 minutes);
• Linking with Production Rhythm: Link home appliance automated powder paint coating lines with front-end injection molding and back-end assembly links, synchronizing order progress through the MES system. When front-end injection molding capacity increases, the coating line can automatically speed up the conveying speed (from 1m/min to 1.5m/min) to avoid workpiece accumulation. After an enterprise applied this, the capacity utilization rate of the powder paint coating link increased from 65% to 92%.

3. Environmental Protection and Quality: Dual Measures to Meet Strict Requirements of Home Appliance Production

• Environmental Systems Adapted to Production: Home appliance powder paint coating environmental systems adopt a combined process of "paint mist capture + activated carbon adsorption + catalytic combustion". The paint mist capture rate reaches 99%, avoiding coating waste; the heat recovery rate of the catalytic combustion device is 70%, which can use waste heat for workpiece preheating, saving over 150,000 yuan in annual electricity costs. At the same time, the system is equipped with a real-time monitoring module, and the VOCs emission concentration can be displayed in real time (≤30mg/m³), easily coping with environmental inspections;
• Quality Control Embedded in the Entire Process: Set up inspection links at key nodes of home appliance automated powder paint coating lines: check the phosphating film thickness after pretreatment (2-5μm to ensure coating adhesion); monitor color consistency with an online color difference meter (ΔE≤0.8) after powder paint coating; conduct pencil hardness tests and yellowing resistance tests after curing, and automatically divert unqualified products. A customer reported that after adopting this scheme, the complaint rate of home appliance coatings dropped from 8% to 0.5%, and the customer repurchase rate increased by 12%.

Conclusion