Coating apparatus – Projection or spray type – Moving projector
Patent
1996-01-19
1998-03-31
Czaja, Donald E.
Coating apparatus
Projection or spray type
Moving projector
118326, B05B 300, B05B 128
Patent
active
057333742
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This application is a National Stage Application filed under 35. U.S.C. 371 PCT/NO93/00117 filed Jul. 19, 1993.
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is related to a painting booth and robot installation for painting objects inside the painting booth, wherein the booth has walls isolating the object to be painted from the surroundings.
RELATED ART
Programmable robots are generally known in the art and well described in the literature. Special types of such robots are designed to be used for painting of certain objects, e.g. motor cars, and a robot of this type may be "taught" or preprogrammed by a skilled operator to perform the appropriate movements of a painting tool in order to apply a prescribed layer of paint to a selected part of the motor car body.
Painting of motor cars on an industrial scale usually takes place in painting booths, through which the car bodies are moved on conveyors in line succession. Such booths may secure sufficient isolation of the health injurious painting areas from the environments.
For external painting of car bodies in such booths, simple and economical reciprocators or the like are usually used. Apparatus of this type may have a sufficient range of reciprocal motion in the vertical direction, but have rather limited ranges of motion in the transverse direction of the painting booth, and practically no option for tracking the object to be painted in the direction of the conveyor motion through the booth. Several such reciprocators having overlapping working ranges along the length of direction of the -booth must then be used to maintain a reasonable conveyor speed and paint coverage.
In order to achieve a uniform layer of paint and optimum painting quality, the paint must be sprayed from the painting tool in a controlled manner normal to the surface to be covered. The motion pattern of the tool must then be correspondingly programmed in relation to the curved surfaces and edges of the car body. This can only be accomplished by means of robot manipulators with six or more axes of motion, which also would allow efficient tracking of the object to be painted and higher conveyor speed through the painting booth. Such robots must then be located in the painting booth itself, which would require considerably wider booths than with the reciprocator embodiment discussed above.
Wider booths would, however, require larger volume flow of venting air through the booth, and the extended movements of the manipulator parts of robots with many axes of motion, which are located within the booth, may well set up turbulence or disturbance in the air flow.
It is, however, essential that the flow of air along the object to be painted is uniform, in order not to disturb the dispersed atomized paint particles directed from the painting tool towards the surfaces to be uniformly painted.
As explained above, both the use of wall mounted reciprocator and location of advanced robots within the painting booth have certain disadvantages. It is therefore a main object of the present invention to provide a robot installation that to a great extent would overcome all such disadvantages.
It should be noted, however, that the present invention is solely directed to the mounting and installation for robots for the above and similar purposes and is not concerned with the design or construction of the painting robots per se, or with the programming of robots for efficient and satisfactory painting operations consistent with the form and movements of the objects to be painted.
Such design and programming are well described elsewhere, e.g. in GB Pat. No. 1.431.413 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,920,500 owned in common with the present application.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
This invention concerns a painting booth and robot installation for painting objects inside the painting booth, wherein the booth has walls isolating the object to be painted from the surroundings, and wherein the robot installation comprises at least one robot shaft associated with i.e., connected to, a painting tool and protruding throug
REFERENCES:
patent: 4611695 (1986-09-01), Kato et al.
patent: 4920500 (1990-04-01), Hetland et al.
patent: 5213620 (1993-05-01), Meyer
Czaja Donald E.
Padsell Calvin
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