Coating Dry Times
How Do Dry Times Affect Your Throughput?
Could faster dry times improve your production efficiency? Optimizing the drying process can help reduce space needs, increase throughput, eliminate bottlenecks and save on energy costs. If your oven temperature can be lowered or curing cycles reduced, the gains multiply.
The Drying Process
Three Phases of Drying
In industrial coating applications, drying (or “curing”) isn’t just the last step – it’s a critical part of the overall production process. Each curing phase directly impacts throughput, quality and operational costs. Here’s a closer look at how understanding and optimizing dry times can improve your line efficiency.
Flash-Off
The initial drying stage where solvents begin to evaporate. During this phase, maintaining proper airflow is crucial for uniform drying.
Tack-Free
This phase occurs when the coating no longer feels sticky to the touch. Faster transitions through this phase can allow for quicker handling and processing. Each process is unique, so consider recoat time, tape-free time and dry-to-sand time, as necessary.
Full Cure
Achieving full hardness and durability. Reaching the full cure phase in a timely manner is key to reducing baking time, freeing up space and increasing the overall pace of your line.
Optimizing Dry Times
Optimizing dry times can increase your company’s throughput by:
- Reducing Bottlenecks: Faster drying times mean fewer delays between application and the next production step, allowing for a smoother flow on the line.
- Lowering Energy Costs: Efficient drying processes, especially during curing, can reduce the amount of energy consumed and heat produced, lowering operational costs.
- Improving Output: By optimizing each drying phase, you can decrease downtime and increase the overall throughput of your line.
Techniques to Optimize Dry Times
- Controlled Environment: Regulate temperature, humidity and airflow to create ideal drying conditions.
- Coatings Selection: Some coatings are formulated to deliver faster curing times without compromising on quality or finish. Others cure at low or even ambient temperatures.
- Process Automation: Automate monitoring and control of dry times to ensure consistent results.
How Sherwin-Williams Helps You Improve Dry Times & Efficiency
At Sherwin-Williams, we know that every second counts in manufacturing. That’s why we’ve developed a range of advanced coatings to maximize the efficiency of your line, including formulas that dry faster and have flexible cure schedules, accelerators and additives that reduce curing cycles and formulas that cure at lower temperatures, or even air-dry.
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How Can Sherwin-Williams Help?
Beyond our products, our technical service representatives are available for consultation to evaluate your line, identify bottlenecks and offer solutions to optimize. Get in touch today to learn more.