Is there anyone out there with experience with applying SPC in a manual spray application paint shop.

Is there anyone out there with experience with applying SPC in a manual spray application paint shop.

This really depends on what you are spraying and what characteristics are important to your customer.

You can measure things such as coating thickness and overall colour measurements using SPC techniques and these would give you indications of the stability of your process across a run, but it really depends on:

A. The application (I mean, does a thicker coating mean your product won't meet with your customers requirements or is it a symptom of your process becoming unstable in another area?)

B. The characteristics that are important to your customer.

Do you have a control plan? Have you done a PFMEA? The FMEA process would have determined what characteristics need the most control and monitoring.

We have done limited SPC data collection in a manual spray paint environment, but it did boil down to the two things above.

HTH

Military paint specification requiring min/max allowable dry film thickness. Yes we have PFMEA and control plan's in place.

Are you having issues in meeting the specification with your process? Has the customer stipulated you must use SPC to monitor this characteristic? Do you have any experience in using SPC in other manufacturing areas?

As this is the dry film thickness, measuring it would be an "after the event" action, as by the time your plaque has dried, you would most probably have finished a pretty lengthy run of product. Do you understand the correlation between wet film thickness and eventual dry film thickness? If you can monitor the wet film thickness and set allowable limits for this, then you can control the dry film thickness, as long as the conditions used to dry the paint are kept consistent. We have done this before on a manual operation. We just used control charts to monitor.

Please note that although I have been involved in a manual painting process before, my experience is limited. Therefore, can anyone else advise, who paints on a day to day basis.

Hello Cjbaltes
Could you let us know a little bit more about your needs, in additon to ones Mannix has already asked for:
What for you would like to use SPC data in a manual painting environment ?
Do you mean SPC or data monitoring (tracking) for evaluation
What are your customer requirements, other than dry film thickness, and What is the main requirement in which order ? (color and gloss,adhesion,wear, scratch resistance, solvent resistabce, and maybe the last one layer thichness)
What characteristics from the above you would like to use SPC ?
What is you substrate, and measuring method ?
How wide is your tolerance (8 to 12 microns ?)
What is your actual process performance, and controll method ?
Have you done a GageR&R for you measuring sistem, if yes what are your results.
Just a few questions which came in my mind. Then we can help, but it's risky to give you advice like to use or not SPC for your application, without uderstanding your needs, process, and so on.
BR
György

I've been involved in painting to some extent.

I'd say "no".
I would not use SPC in the application I was involved in (water and solvent based paints on PVC extrusions).

Reason: SPC is supposed to be done in relatively real time to demonstrate trends and adjust the process accordingly. In order to measure, say, coating thickness the paint needs to dry and cure. By the time the paint was dry it would be too late to make use of any measurements aside from an accept/reject decision.
I suppose L*a*b* could be measured more quickly, but you should really check that when batching the paint, not after application.

I'd invest more in training of the sprayers because there is a real art to manual spraying.

We are a manual paint shop using manual spray systems on an automated line, and solvent based paint. Military application for the end user. I am looking to find methods to improve 1st pass yield and maybe SPC is not the answer as characteristics we need to control are wet mils, dry mils and adhesion which are all after the fact inspections. We unfortunately have a high turn over with our painter's which is an issue I am pushing for resolution and totally agree with Scott K as far as training the painters as not just anyone can pick up a spray gun and paint moving targets up to 10 FPM for 8 hours a day.

We are a manual paint shop using manual spray systems on an automated line, and solvent based paint. Military application for the end user. I am looking to find methods to improve 1st pass yield and maybe SPC is not the answer as characteristics we need to control are wet mils, dry mils and adhesion which are all after the fact inspections. We unfortunately have a high turn over with our painter's which is an issue I am pushing for resolution and totally agree with Scott K as far as training the painters as not just anyone can pick up a spray gun and paint moving targets up to 10 FPM for 8 hours a day.

Can't cost justify automation?
That sounds terribly tedious for a good sprayer so I would understand the turnover.