Stephen Woolverton

Painting Fixtures— The white parts are precise, custom painting fixtures. The pink items are the customer’s product. Automated paintwork always requires fixtures and very often masking. Fixtures & masks are consumable parts created for manufacturing. With finish material build-up these parts are short lived and can add a significant incremental cost to your part’s unit cost. Additionally, painting and masking leads to finish errors (runs, drips, finger prints, etc.) which can reduce the yield and again run up your unit cost. Not so fast: Clear finishes are not immune from any of these issues. Painted plastic can appear and feel very special. Don’t avoid paint finishes. Be judicious.

Laser Etched selective paint removal— a CNC laser removes a blanket coat of paint to create a two-color design on a silicone mobile phone case. Make certain the lasers have light curtains [ISO13855] and good ventilation. The machine operators should wear proper eye protection [ISO4007].

Decorative inkjet printing is cured with a UV lamp. Please wear proper eye protection.

This may look like a pretty good painting process but it is not. Hand painting is fine for a few samples but in mass production this will lead to very inconstant results and contaminated parts. inconstant results: uneven finish thickness, build up in part relief, interference in functional elements; contamination: tool marks/scratches, dirt, dust, finger prints, hair (human and animal both! I could go on listing the crazy stuff I have seen caught up in painted surfaces but you need to buy me a beer first.) Look for proper ventilation: capture of overspray, air scrubbers, and disposal of the waste paint. Workers should be wearing air filtering masks and eye protection.

Spring Steel Fixtures— Some painting processes lend themselves to spring steel painting fixtures. These infinitely reusable fixtures create much less manufacturing waste and thus lend to a lower unit cost as compared to precisely-fitted plastic fixtures. Unfortunately spring steel fixtures have downsides: • not all product designs are compatible • the steel end points will damage the plastic • scratching during disassembly is a very common error cause by careless workers • the steel arms will cast shadows during the paint process leaving little geometric patterns in the finish