Drill Pipe Painting

This project involved designing a reciprocator to replace the customer's antiquated trestle paint system that was demolished by an overhead crane accident.  This manufacturer of various diameter drill-pipes (roughly 30' long) returned to high production painting with a solution developed by our engineering staff and Southeastern sales engineer, Robb Brewer, who was on site a day after the call came in.

Working closely with their production supervisors and operators, Thierica provided a system that exceeded their expectations for throughput and functionality.  The old system produced costly overspray that prematurely clogged the filters and contaminated the surrounding area.  The solution consisted of a dual spray head reciprocator with independently driven horizontal and vertical positional control, programmed with preset heights for each diameter of pipe.  The result provides an optimum standoff distance for the guns that increase transfer efficiency and reduce cycle time.  The project was completed ahead of schedule with great success due to the cooperation and teamwork shared with our customer.

Coating System for Hydraulic Fittings

Phil Morrison of Classic Metal Finishing needed a custom paint machine to apply friction reducing coatings to hydraulic fittings. The cylindrical part required a precise application of coating to the ID and OD of the part.  The challenge was to design a system for speed and accuracy while keeping it versatile for the various fitting sizes.  Dave Kooienga (Thierica sales) led our team to the engineered solution that includes an index table and Fanuc's new miniature paint robot.

Our system included mounting dual guns to the robot arm to address each surface.  The 6-axis robot also gave flexibility with the large variation of parts, thus no setup time lost between fitting type and size.  Primary benefits for the customer are material savings, smaller footprint, increased productivity as well as the advantage of being able to add many new part sizes.