Customer requirements

Soliant, a paint film manufacturer based in Lancaster, South Carolina, USA, needed a better way to weigh and mix 125 Kg drums of acrylic resin. Employees manually pushed 125 Kg drums filled with the powder to a scale for weighing and adding to a mix. Once weighed out, two employees manually scooped around 700 grm of powder at a time from the drums to the mixing vessel, the beginning stage of the Fluorex™ process.

Fluorex™ is an alternative to traditional paint and plating systems and is more durable, cost effective and environmentally friendly. With a current production palette of over 140 different colours, Soliant thermoplastic decorative film and coating is used by a variety of industries from automotive to marine, architectural, signage, appliance, electronics, telecom and others.

Before scooping into the mixing vessel, employees first had to hand inspect the contents of each drum and physically break up any lumps or sticky powder. Speed and consistency varied from application to application. Each application required an average of 25 minutes per employee or almost a man-hour hour for each operation.

Spiroflow solutions

Designed and custom built for Soliant by our US based sister company Spiroflow Sytems Inc, the all stainless steel Conveyor and Distribution system consists of an inclined 2.25m long straight-line Aero Mechanical Conveyor (AMC) with a sack tip hopper at the inlet.

The Spiroflow AMC system is mounted on a mobile frame complete with two fixed and two swivel casters. The casters assure easy positioning and have locking brakes for maximum safety. When required to add material to the mixer, the mobile conveyor is positioned on to a 1.25 m square weight platform that is sunk into the floor so that its top is flush with the factory floor.

Once located on the weigh platform, the weight of the conveyor is tared off so that the precise amount of acrylic powder can be loaded into the conveyor feed hopper. The powder is tipped into the hopper through a plastic strip curtain located at the front of the dust hood above it. The dust hood is connected to a dust extraction system that assures an environmentally safe dust free operation. A grid across the top of the hopper is used to break up any agglomerates of material, a main concern with the previous procedure. A rotary valve controls the rate of flow from the hopper to the conveyor. Six air operated vibratory pads strategically placed around the hopper ensure a consistent flow of powder into the rotary valve at the hopper outlet without bridging.

The conveyor has 80 mm. conveying tubes and operates at an angle of 45 degrees. Air motors power both the conveyor and rotary valve. This is common in hazardous environments. An inter-locked access panel facilitates cleaning of the internal conveyor components and a vision panel in one of the conveying tubes enables operators to determine when cleaning is required.

The problem of lumpy, sticky powder has been eliminated at Soliant, now making it a worry-free operation!