Rainford Solutions, a leading manufacturer of indoor and outdoor racks, cabinets and enclosures has opened a new £1 million- electrostatic powder painting plant at its site in St Helens, Merseyside.
Rainford partnered with leading specialists in powder coating, GEMA and RDM Engineering, to create one of the most advanced in-house powder paint operations in the UK.
The company said the new plant will bring significant benefits to the business and Rainford customers in process control, capacity, speed, reliability and powder coating performance.
Over 950 square metres, the plant houses two advanced powder coating processes. Line one comprises a fully automated on-line solution, with an advanced four stage pre-treatment wash and encompassing the latest fast colour change powder application technology.
This line will support small to large production volumes with a second semi-automated bespoke line supporting prototype and project work.
The spray booth is GEMA’s Magic Compact fast colour change booth which has a five-to-15-minute colour change time. The booth has a recycling cyclone, automatic reciprocating guns and two manual touch-up platforms. It also features the MagicControl 4.0 control system, a pioneering interface for smart factory automation. The system ensures intelligent networking for all application components providing greater efficiency and manageability to the process.
The state-of-the-art paint booth has a paint reclaim value of 97% – the highest reclaim figure in the industry. Excess paint falls back into the system, gets cleaned and mixed again with the fresh paint, leaving only 3% wastage.
Rainford managing director, Jerome Fox, said: “This investment is part of our on-going growth strategy, strengthening further our operational capability to meet market demand. Bringing the powder painting process in house means we have full control of the process from design to final product.”
