Pneumatic Pump Control and Hybrid Mode Resolve Shift Change Problems

CUSTOMER: Agricultural Equipment Manufacturer

GRACO EQUIPMENT: Intelligent Paint Kitchen

CHALLENGE: An agricultural equipment manufacturer coated hay tool implements with a two component (2K) urethane material. Although their equipment worked well, they struggled with paint mix room management.

Only the first shift maintenance technician knew how to mitigate issues. If these problems came up during second or third shift, they’d go unaddressed:

• Empty paint drums would run dry and cause pump runaway.
• Overfilled supply tanks leaked paint all over the floor and took several hours to clean up.
• Throughout the day, 40 to 50 degree temperature fluctuations affected paint viscosity, throwing the circulation system out of balance.

This left them with two shifts of bad parts or no usable parts at all.

When the first shift maintenance technician came in, it took at least 30 minutes to fix problems from the other shifts and restart production.

SOLUTION: A webinar about Graco’s Intelligent Paint Kitchen sparked the manufacturing engineer’s interest enough to get a quote. At the time, the system managed only electric pumps. After investing in new pneumatic pumps, they couldn’t justify the cost of converting to electric.

When the manufacturing engineer heard Graco was testing Intelligent Paint Kitchen control of pneumatic pumps, he was first in line.

RESULT: The Intelligent Paint Kitchen works well with their High-Flo pumps with NXT 2200 air motors and 1000cc Sealed 4-Ball lowers. Oversight of pump metrics and tank levels from outside of the paint room mitigates many issues.

The Intelligent Paint Kitchen’s hybrid mode allowed them to program the knowledge of their first shift maintenance technician into system. 

• Flow and pressure rates automatically adjusted to changing temperature and paint viscosity throughout the day.
• Pumps running colors not in use automatically slowed production to save on paint and pump wear
• Alerts provided real time troubleshooting on problems inside the paint kitchen.

Since Intelligent Paint Kitchen sensors, actuators and control modules were added to their pneumatic equipment, they haven’t needed adjustment. The agricultural equipment manufacturer has saved hours in downtime, cut down on numerous quality issues, and thousands of headaches.