Page 60 - Australasian Paint & Panel Nov-Dec 2019

Christmas Clean Up
60
PAINT&PANEL NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2019
MINIMISE BOOTH DOWNTIME
3M’S GEORGE DISCALA DISCUSSES THE STICKY SUBJECT OF SPRAYBOOTH MAINTENANCE AND HOW 3M DIRT TRAP CAN HELP.
EGULAR MAINTENANCE OF
tools and equipment in a workshop not only has an immediate impact on such is- sues as employee effectiveness, but can affect the level of safety and efficiencies in a workshop. Mainte- nance cycles should be planned ac- cording to the manufacturer’s recom- mended timing. One of the most expensive pieces of equipment in the
repair facility is the spraybooth.
Once installed, to ensure a return on investment, you start pumping cars through the booth. As soon as you start spraying, overspray hits the walls and this quickly builds up. The walls be- come darker, meaning it gets more dif-
ficult to see that appropriate coverage has been achieved while spraying. Also, you notice that you are spending more time removing dust nibs in the jobs, no matter how much you tack be- fore spraying.
TIME TO CLEAN THE BOOTH
You get the random orbital sander out and start sanding to remove the over- spray, which means you need to respray the walls. Change the filters and scrub down the grates. A tremendous amount of time is required for this process, po- tentially up to a week. Consequently, you hold off till the last week of the year before shutdown, to try and minimise the disruption in work flow.
Australian state standards re- quire painters to use supplied air to minimise the exposure to at- omised paint and in particular, isocyanates. The maintenance cycle must also include measure- ment of the quality of the breath- ing air.
You don’t want to repeat this ex- ercise next year, so you want to put some protection on the walls to save time sanding and respraying. You might try a spray-on or brush- on coating. After applying this to your booth you will need to wait for it to dry (a little more time re- quired, but that’s ok, you will make up time on the back end).
You eventually get back to spraying vehicles and again, over- spray starts hitting the wall and over time this becomes thicker and thicker, but this will be easy to clean up at the end of the year.
R
OPPOSITE PAGE: A clean booth saves the cost of denibbing time that you don’t get paid for.
LEFT: Just peel away the film and replace.