We Don't Sell Equipment; We Engineer Manufacturing Solutions.

Upgrading your **coating equipment** is a major decision. Use this checklist to ensure you've considered the key factors. 1. **Bottleneck Analysis:** Have you identified the true bottleneck in your current process? (It may not be the spray gun). 2. **Total Cost of Ownership (TCO):** Are you looking beyond the purchase price to calculate long-term savings in materials, energy, and labor? 3. **Future-Proofing:** Does the new equipment have the capacity and technological capability (e.g., Industry 4.0 readiness) to meet your needs in 5-10 years? 4. **Environmental Compliance:** Will the new system meet not just current, but also future anticipated environmental regulations for VOCs and waste? 5. **Vendor as a Partner:** Are you choosing a vendor like TIMS who will analyze your process, provide a custom-engineered solution, and offer long-term support, or are you just buying a machine from a catalog?

Industrial coating equipment can be categorized into three primary families based on the finishing material used. The first is powder coating equipment, which involves electrostatically charging a dry powder and spraying it onto a grounded part before curing it in an oven. The second is liquid coating equipment, which includes systems for spraying liquid paint, as well as dip-coating processes like electrophoresis (E-coat) for superior corrosion protection. The third is specialized equipment for materials like porcelain enamel, which requires extremely high-temperature furnaces. Each family includes essential sub-systems for pretreatment (washing/etching), application (booths, guns, robots), and curing (ovens). TIMS is an expert in designing and integrating all types of coating equipment into a complete, high-performance production line.

Pretreatment is the foundational stage of any high-quality finishing system. It is a multi-stage washing process designed to do two things: clean the part's surface and apply a conversion coating. Cleaning, typically with an alkaline solution, removes oils and soils. The conversion coating, often iron phosphate or zirconium, microscopically etches the surface and deposits a thin, inert layer. This layer provides corrosion resistance and creates a perfect profile for the paint or powder to adhere to. Without proper pretreatment, even the best coating applied by the most advanced coating equipment will fail. At TIMS, we consider the pretreatment washer to be the most critical component of the line, and we engineer it with the same precision and control as the robotic application and curing systems.

A "Class A" finish, characterized by its deep gloss, smoothness, and absence of any defects, is the holy grail of coating. It is only achievable with highly specialized liquid coating equipment and impeccable process control. The process starts with a multi-stage pretreatment process to create a perfectly clean and sealed surface. The application must take place in a climate-controlled, downdraft cleanroom booth to eliminate any airborne dust. Multiple coats—typically a primer, a colored base coat, and a protective clear coat—are applied by precisely programmed robots. Each layer is often partially cured ("flashed off") before the next is applied. Finally, the part is cured in a multi-zone oven that uses a combination of infrared and convection heat to ensure a perfect, smooth flow-out of the clear coat. TIMS specializes in architecting the complex, integrated coating equipment systems required to achieve this pinnacle of surface finishing.