Reduction of booth and drying times

Shorten spray booth and drying times in paint shops

Owners of body and paint stores need to keep their business economical and competitive. This is why drying and booth times need to be reduced. One key to success lies in optimizing processes and making intelligent use of available technology – especially when it comes to drying.

Traditional paint and drying booths are standard equipment in every body and paint store. The drying process is carried out by heating the booth air. This technology has been tried and tested for decades, but also has significant disadvantages compared to other drying methods.

It is undisputed that infrared (IR) drying is much more cost-effective than the usual air drying. Depending on the application, manufacturers speak of cost savings of 50% and more. The advantage of infrared drying is also easy to understand.

With traditional drying, the entire air in a relatively large paint booth has to be permanently heated or kept warm, even though only a small repainted area on a vehicle or vehicle part actually needs to be dried.

IR drying in paint booths and in painting technology

Infrared drying does not heat the ambient air in the entire cabin or the entire vehicle. The artificially generated infrared rays familiar to us from natural solar radiation only heat the painted surface. This concentrated, pinpoint drying results in considerable energy savings.

Traditional painting and drying booths require time to heat up and cool down before and after drying and to exchange the required air volumes. This limits the daily number of possible painting and drying processes per paint booth. With IR drying, these waiting times are eliminated. The vehicle and parts throughput can be significantly increased.

Despite the many proven benefits of infrared drying, an existing body and paint store cannot and should not suddenly dismantle its existing classic painting and drying booths and switch completely to new technologies.

There are still no IR paint booths based entirely on IR drying in Germany. However, it is already possible to use IR technology successfully in traditionally equipped companies.

Spray booth with IR gantry dryer

One way is to integrate an IR gantry dryer into an existing combi-coating booth or dryer. This can significantly increase throughput in an existing operation. This is particularly interesting if there is no space in your own company to increase capacity by adding more spray booths and dryers. Many companies have reached their capacity limits, have to work multiple shifts or have to forego orders. An additional integrated IR gantry dryer can solve this problem.

Paint booth manufacturers such as SEHON have been working on energy and process-optimized painting systems and technology for many years. Currently, IR gantry dryers are also being installed in paint stores, both for new builds and for modernization.

Multifunctional workstations

Another alternative is the multifunctional workstations developed by SEHON, which have been used successfully in companies for years and use infrared drying. These workstations also lead to enormous reductions in drying and booth times.

Basically and in simplified terms, these multifunctional workstations are nothing more than closed painting booths with a fully automatically controlled drying process via an IR half-arc. But this technology solution goes one step further.

All tasks that would normally require a separate preparation area can also be carried out in the multifunctional booths. This results in an all-in-one workstation: from preparation and painting to quick drying in one and the same place.

This technology therefore not only uses the cost and time advantages of IR drying, but also increases efficiency through process optimization. The costly and time-consuming shunting of vehicles back and forth between the individual process steps is no longer necessary with multifunctional booths. According to the manufacturer, this energy and process-optimized painting technology can save up to 80% of the costs otherwise incurred compared to traditional methods.

In larger, throughput and volume-dependent companies, several multi-workstations arranged in parallel are therefore used in addition to classic combined painting/drying booths. It is not necessary to install an IR arc for drying at each of these workstations. A single IR arc supplies all multi-workstations and is guided fully automatically via the ceiling to the workstation where the preparation and painting has taken place and where drying is now to take place.

Most companies already use small mobile IR dryers in the preparation area and for spot repairs. If you are thinking about reducing drying and booth times or expanding capacity, there is hardly any way around the intelligent use of infrared technology on a larger scale, e.g. with IR gantry dryers or multifunctional booths.