Manufacturer Saves Hundreds of Parts

CUSTOMER: Automotive Interior Manufacturer

GRACO EQUIPMENT: ProControl 1KE Plus

CHALLENGE: One automaker used flocking to finish about 2,000 interior parts per day.  So that flock evenly coated each part before it was baked in an oven, a one-component adhesive had to cover an entire part at a precise mil thickness.

Since their adhesive and parts were black, defects were nearly impossible to detect until after parts came out of the oven. By that time, they’d lose more than 100 parts and an hour of production time.

The problem traced back to fluid pressure. Slight changes in flow affected adhesive thickness enough to throw off the entire finish.

A ProControl 1KE supplied adhesive to the automatic spray gun. On this unit, an operator could manually set fluid pressure. But changes in environmental factors or the material could throw off levels at any time. There was no way to know whether fluid pressure was consistent.  

SOLUTION: Their local distributor and Graco account representative suggested looking at a new in-line fluid monitoring and control package made for production lines like theirs.

The ProControl1KE Plus regulates fluid pressure range with closed loop flow control. The feature constantly monitors the equipment’s fluid pressure levels and automatically corrects itself in real time. If environmental or viscosity factors cause settings to go out of range, the unit alarms and pauses production, so that defects can be detected and fixed.

PIN (personal identification number) protection ensures that only authorized employees can adjust settings. 

RESULTS: Early detection and closed loop flow control saved the automotive manufacturer hundreds of parts and hours of production time – a major process improvement overall.

Their ProControl 1KE Plus regulates its flow rate, keeping mil thickness consistent on each part. If settings get out of the desired range, an alert quickly catches the problem.

• Only two or three parts are damaged, compared to over 100.
• Only a few minutes of production time are lost, compared to over an hour.
• With all of the saved parts, adhesive usage decreased 20 percent.