More flexibility coating iron pipes thanks to Graco’s XM unit

Saint Gobain PAM Spain is a leader in designing and manufacturing complete ductile iron pipes, fittings and valves for reusable water markets.

In a spirit of continuous innovation and to meet the needs of an evolving market, they wanted to improve the sanitary pipe coating application that was causing a lot of material waste mostly due to human error. The challenge was to find a solution that would eliminate most of these errors and improve the final result.

Less waste & more control

The solution provided by the local Graco distributor, Ochoa Maquinaria, was to replace five old hydraulic mixing units by five Graco XM units. The XM unit provides the perfect solution as it provides variable mix ratios from 1:1 to 10:1, a data reporting system with a USB connection, plus an electronic control throughout the coating process.

The XM units also provide improvements to the factory process, such as the elimination of system flushing and manual handling for paint changes which caused a lot of the material waste.

The old units couldn’t be controlled at all in their production line, whereas by using Graco XM units, Saint Gobain PAM Spain now knows exactly how their production is going and controls their paint consumption. On the production line, the pipe now enters an automatic rollers zone which turns the pipes around and the complete pipe is coated with four automatic airless spray guns before it’s ready for storage.
 

Data reporting for every single production line

Today, Saint Gobain PAM is more flexible for their customers: as they are using an automatic production line, different mixing ratios and different qualities can be programmed for different end-user requests. Data reporting is available for every production line to control any problem that may occur. 

Less waste material, an improved final surface application and data reporting for each pipeline are some of the improvements that Saint Gobain PAM Spain now experience with Graco’s XM units.

More information

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