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PRODUCTS FINISHING — PFonline.com 19 THE VOICE OF FINISHING 80 YEARS Total Fabrication Facility With a soon-to-be 300,000-square-foot complex, Co-Line provides a total metal fabrication system for its customers, from design to finished production, including application of liquid coatings. Its services include 13 metal stamping presses with capacity from 60 to 800 tons; 2D and 3D laser cutting up to 1-inch, 3D tube laser cutting up to 10-inches in diameter; manual and robotic welding; automatic saw cutting; CNC automated machining and turning with five-axis capability and multi-spindle CNC Lathes; CNC tube and flat bending, design and engineering; tool and die; and in-house finishing services, including two electrostatic liquid paint systems capable of multi-part advanced finishes and an upcoming powder coating line to be installed in the spring of 2017. Co-Line is a private, family-owned company where the owners are involved daily in the entire operation. Dale and Tana Brand started the company in 1979 when they opened a welding repair shop. Because their business was located on the Jasper-Mahaska county line, they named it County Line Welding, later shortened to Co-Line. In 1988, Co-Line developed a proprietary gate system for residential, commercial and livestock gates called Sure-Latch, which launched them into high-volume manufacturing. The company has undergone several significant expansions in facilities and equipment through its 37-year history. Co-Line is also the sole manufacturer of Goalsetter Basketball Systems, a premier height-adjustable basketball goal for residential and commercial use. They currently have about 150 employees serving customers in various industries. Over the years, expansion and additional customers caught up with the Co-Line painting operations process, and Eric Brand began the task of looking at upgrading equipment and systems to better serve customers and increase efficiencies. That led to Brand speaking with Justin Hooper, the product manager of mixing solutions and accessories for Carlisle Fluid Technologies (CFT), which owns the DeVilbiss, Ransburg, MS, BGK and Binks brands of liquid and powder coating applications. GEMS Analytics As Brand spoke with several vendors about replacing the guns and mixers, something kept driving him back to the Binks GEMS products that CFT sold. "When it comes down to it, most of the liquid paint equip- ment on the market is pretty similar and all works at a very high level," Brand says. "The thing that stood out for me working with CFT was the additional analytics that the Binks brand brought to the table." The GEMS setup audits the paint resin and solvent usage while also helping to reduce solvent waste for up to five colors and two spray guns. It is capable of storing data for unique production jobs, where it can record spraying times, color changes, as well as A/B material and solvent usage. Hooper says that when coatings are "hot potted" or pre- mixed, there are several considerations: • Ho w much time does it take to measure and mix? • What if the coating is over/under, or not catalyzed? • What if t oo much/not enough coating is mixed? • What if t he mixed coating is not consistent? • What is the cost of supplies such as cups, stirs, cleaning solvent, rags, liners, strainers and gloves? • How is pot life managed? "With the GEMS products, the costs and risks are minimized for those questions," Hooper says. "The waste savings are maxi- mized while solvent usage, mixing time, and color-change times are greatly reduced." For example, the GEMS has a timer on the spray guns that monitors when the trigger is pulled and liquid paint is atomized and sprayed. Co-Line and CFT set up the GEMS to monitor how long the trigger was pulled, how often and then tabulated the total amount in a work shift when the employee was spraying material. The system is smart enough to know when the gun is being used for atomized coatings and when it is used to flush. Improved Spraying When Co-Line first set its baseline on several painters, it analyzed the data and saw that on an average 10-hour shift, they were spraying The GEMS setup audits the paint resin and solvent usage, while also helping to reduce solvent waste for up to five colors and two spray guns. DATA-DRIVEN COATING