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Lighting standard for visual inspection of powder coating?
Q. In powdercoating application plants, is there any recognised standard for the lighting under which inspection on the line is undertaken?
By this I mean is there a lighting standard that applies to the lighting that is lighting a production line, in order that visual inspection is standardised?
Lighting variables that it might address will include intensity, colour, shadowing, angles of incidence etc.
Geoff Crowley
Crithwood Ltd.
Westfield, Scotland, UK
August 2, 2011
A. Google - BS950 Part 1 (daylight) and BS950 Part 2 (northlight). I think Part 2 is the one for industrial coatings. Also check the new EU standard ISO 3664 - not sure about this one.
Birmingham, United Kingdom
August 3, 2011
A. Thanks for the excellent search term, Terry.
Geoff, in the old days when chrome was king, 60-page+ booklets were written on the subject of inspection booth design and lighting. They are hard to come by, but if you keep your eyes open for the author, "William Safranek", you may find them. There is an "Inspection of Zinc Die Castings" chapter in Safranek & Brooman's "Finishing and Electroplating Die Cast and Wrought Zinc"; while some is off-topic for you, there is interesting info about patterned vs. diffuse lighting, etc.
You actually asked about "lighting a production line", though, and I doubt that you'll get a production line lit to a fraction of the intensity called for by the inspection standards that Terry mentions; they really apply to inspection booths. But I can pretty confidently say that your production area is not bright enough, because I've never ever seen one that was :-)
. . . and based on feedback like this: "I came upon an article of yours on plating plants for today , and took some of it to heart ("plating plants must be bright") . Anyhow I installed six 400W mercury vapor lamps in my shop, holy sh*t, I could not believe the difference. For the past twenty years I had thought my plant to be well lit, but now I can see that I was working in the dark (light as well as ages) it was the best info that you could have given. Thanks."
Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
August 5, 2011
A. Geoff,
Some years ago I did extensive work with the Ford Motor Company to optimize the inspection and repair of paint in their factories. You can find more information in the article in Products Finishing "Maximizing Paint Inspection Performance".
Thank you,
- Ellisville, Missouri, USA
March 25, 2013
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Ed. note Oct. 2013: Unfortunately, the link to that article has now broken and we weren't able to easily find it again. But readers can try at pfonline.com or maybe archive.org.
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