The Impact of Viscosity on Coating Atomization Patterns and Paint Lay Down

For any manufacturing environment that involves painting, the paint process is the most expensive process in the plant. It is the most expensive to build and operate, and accounts for more rework and scrap than any other department.

Setting up a new part or paint color is a tedious process. Robot manufacturers and other software companies have created complex simulation programs to “shorten” this timeline, but they depend on many assumptions – inaccuracy in any of which can result in defects, missed deadlines, scrap, etc. Moreover, checking the result of these simulations requires painting a part (or parts), running them through the cure process, then spending countless hours inspecting each part to determine if the process was successful. Each defect can require hours or even days to resolve.

Even with this level of sophistication, there is no way to account for changes in the spray pattern, transfer volume, and overall finish quality that can be expected when spraying conditions change. This is the reason that so much time, capital, effort, and energy is spent on controlling the environment – yet still we get significant variation in our paint outcomes from morning-to-evening, day-to-day, and season-to-season.

And it’s not limited to the automotive industry...

In this study, in cooperation with CFAN, a manufacturer of high-tech composite jet engine turbine blades – an application where finish quality and consistency are arguably more demanding than the typical automotive application – we utilized the SprayVision System to analyze the impact of temperature based viscosity variations on spray application performance.

The results demonstrate how easy it is to generate inconsistency in an otherwise carefully controlled process.