Infrared oven slashes space and time on Stoelzle spray line 20 February 2013

A carbon infra-red oven from Heraeus Noblelight has helped Stoelzle Flaconnage to achieve faster curing of organic paint sprayed onto to decorative perfume bottles.

Its installation has also saved space, compared with an alternative hot air oven at the company's Knottingley glass manufacturing plant.

Shayne Carr, project engineer at the company – which operates five production lines and produces 110m glass containers per annum – explains that Stoelzle was adapting a mothballed ceramics spraying machine to provide additional organics capacity, but found insufficient space for a conventional warm air oven.

Stoelzle engineers also needed paint drying times to be reduced to match increased production line speeds.

Specialist paint supplier Perfomance Paints, of Tewkesbury, led them to Heraeus, and tests demonstrated that, using carbon infrared, coatings on glass containers could be cured in 90 seconds at a line speed of 4.4m/min – as opposed to 25 minutes for a warm air oven.

As a result, he says, a five-zone oven was installed at the Knottingley site over the existing conveyor system, with each zone consisting of two side and one top infrared modules.

Carr explains that the emitters have a response time of less than two seconds, so the oven can be quickly switched off when there are gaps in the line or in the event of line stoppage. It can also be profiled to meet different bottle heights simply by switching in pairs of side emitters.

"Apart from meeting our requirements for space saving and faster curing times, the new oven has also allowed us greater control over paint curing," confirms Carr.

"It is also more energy-efficient than the warm air alternative and the emitter controllability means that we can quickly adapt to changes in bottle size."

Brian Tinham

Related Companies
Heraeus Noblelight Analytics Ltd

This material is protected by MA Business copyright
See Terms and Conditions.
One-off usage is permitted but bulk copying is not.
For multiple copies contact the sales team.