Adjusting painting processes to new requirements

The surface is the decisive criterion for the success of products and thus for the competitiveness of companies. Industrial coating technology therefore makes an essential contribution to value creation. In-house coating companies as well as contract coaters face changing and new requirements that necessitate appropriate process adjustments. The most comprehensive and future-oriented solution offering for this will be presented at PaintExpo from April 21 to 24, 2020, at the Karlsruhe exhibition grounds. The exhibition portfolio ranges from pretreatment to quality control and packaging.

In all industries, companies are today confronted with a variety of trends and changes. These include, among others: new manufacturing technologies, the use of new and modified materials and material combinations, the repositioning of entire industrial sectors, shorter product life cycles and smaller batch sizes, product personalization, regulatory changes, digital transformation, as well as stricter energy efficiency and climate protection targets. These developments also have an impact on industrial coating technology.

High complexity requires comprehensive information

Even if some of the topics are not new, the competitiveness of coating companies increasingly depends on how well and how quickly they can respond to these changes. This requires an adaptation or optimization of coating processes. The high complexity of coating and finishing processes, with numerous interconnected steps, makes comprehensive information about trends, technologies, new developments, and suppliers along the entire process chain indispensable. PaintExpo from April 21 to 24, 2020, at the Karlsruhe exhibition grounds offers this cross-technology and industry overview with a comprehensive and up-to-date range of offerings that is unparalleled worldwide.

That PaintExpo meets this high standard is demonstrated firstly by a look at the list of exhibitors. By the end of August 2019, over 450 companies from 22 countries had already booked their booth space at the world’s leading trade fair for industrial coating technology, including all market and technology leaders. They already occupy 98 percent of the exhibition space of the 2018 event. Secondly, it is reflected in the exhibition offerings: in the technologies of powder coating, wet and UV coating, as well as coil coating, the portfolio covers entire process chains. The range of materials to be coated extends from metals, plastics, wood, wood-based materials, to glass and ceramics, as well as material combinations. “Contract coaters and visitors from in-house coating companies are enabled by this concentration of providers and technologies to efficiently and targetedly gather information about solutions for their individual tasks and to prepare corresponding investment decisions,” reports Jürgen Haußmann, Managing Director of FairFair GmbH and organizer of PaintExpo.

From pretreatment to quality control

For the increasing demands on quality, flexibility, productivity, material, energy, and cost efficiency, exhibitors present future-oriented solutions in all areas. These include, for example, new and further developments for traditional wet chemical pretreatment as well as alternative processes. In the areas of plant and application technology, new and optimized solutions—including process simulation—ensure improved energy and material efficiency. Another focus here is on increasing flexibility and productivity. Improving energy efficiency is also central to solutions for conventional convection drying as well as alternative methods such as IR, condensation, and UV drying. Robotic coating plays an increasingly important role in medium-sized and smaller coating operations to ensure consistently high quality. New automation concepts enable these companies to make cost-effective entry with flexible solutions. But it’s not only in areas like plant, application, and conveyor technology, drying and networking, paints, automation, and digitalization, as well as quality control, that exhibitors will showcase innovative developments for process optimization at the upcoming PaintExpo. New solutions that enable increased efficiency and process reliability will be presented, for example, in the areas of compressed air supply, conveyor and masking solutions, and packaging. “The comprehensive spectrum of new and improved products, technologies, and processes offers visitors a variety of impulses and approaches to design or adapt their processes for the future,” concludes Jürgen Haußmann.