Industrial Burn Off
Infrared Burn Off Process.
The thermal oxidizing of an organic coating by using either infrared or induction to elevate the temperature of a substrate can achieve a clean substrate in minutes instead of the hours. This is in contrast to the traditional cleaning methods using chemicals, media blasting, or hot air burn off ovens/furnaces.
- Applications for Industrial Burn Off:
- Cleaning Paint Hooks and Load Bars
- Cleaning Extrusion Heads
- Cleaning a Rejected Part for Re-Painting
Left side shows header bar with paint build up before Burn Off. Right side shows clean header bar after Burn Off.
Cleaning Paint Hooks and Load Bars
In today's manufacturing of consumer products, one of the most important aspects of producing a quality product is how it will look to the consumer. The quality of electrocoated products is dependent on the ability of the conveying system to maintain a good ground for efficient transfer of the coating to the substrate or product.
Build-up on hooks and load bars require frequent cleaning. The must common method for cleaning is by use of a hot air furnace to burn off the accumulated coating material. Other methods such as chemical stripping and media blasting are also used. All three methods require hours to return the hooks and load bars to a clean state. In addition to the actual time to clean each hook and load bar, a great deal of labor is needed to off load the conveyor for transport to the cleaning station and the return trip to the conveyor for on loading.
Using infrared or induction, depending upon the application, to clean the hooks and load bars while still on the conveyor line, takes the cleaning process from hours to minutes. Imagine being able to clean all those hooks and bars while on the conveyor. Reducing or even eliminating all that labor. And, more importantly, you can have a good ground every time your part passes through your coating system.
The Southern Company TACs can assist with an evaluation of your line to determine if you can take advantage of this faster method of cleaning. Just contact your account representative to begin the process.
Batch Type Burn Off Oven
Cleaning Extrusion Heads
Producers of synthetic threads face many challenges to keep their production lines humming. The thread producing heads require scheduled cleaning to assure that every orifice is open and can produce an individual thread. It not uncommon to have extrusion heads with as many as 30,000 thread producing holes.
Traditional cleaning methods for heads can employ using chemicals or thermal burn off, using salt bath or hot air furnace, or a combination of the two using thermal followed by a chemical clean. These processes can take hours to achieve a clean head ready for re-install onto the production line.
Infrared heating can accelerate the thermal heating/cleaning cycle by bringing the disassembled extrusion head components to its elevated target temperature in minutes. The entire cleaning process can be completed in a fraction of the time. This new cleaning process was developed at the Southern Company TACs with the assistance of a leading infrared equipment manufacturer.
In 2004, this new cleaning method was installed at a leading textile producer in Alabama with all expected benefits of the new system achieved. Their six (6) hour thermal cleaning followed by a chemical clean has been reduced to a 20 minute thermal cycle and an air blow off.
TAC Brief: New application developed at TAC reduces time to clean spinneret heads.
Cleaning a Rejected Part for Re-Painting
Sometimes a perfectly produced part is rejected only because the protective coating has failed the final quality control check. Many of these parts can be salvaged if they could be stripped of their original coat of paint and be re-coated. For example, a cast iron pipe fitting requiring a heavy mill of powder paint is rejected because the powder did not flow out properly.
Rejected part for re-conditioning |
Infrared Burn Off oven |
Salvaged part after the Burn Off process ready for re-coating |
Instead of rejecting the part to the scrap pile for re-melting, the part can simply be reconditioned by burning off the original coating using infrared burn off technology. Another pass through the wash system and onto the paint line, and your part is now ready for re-inspection.
Take advantage of this new cleaning process. Contact us to schedule an appointment.