1000 KG PER HOUR AT EPC

The Electrolytic Plating Company – known as EPC to its friends – in Walsall, England, plates an enormously wide range of fasteners from items a foot long to small pins measuring just 25mm, and their 169 foot long PAL automatic alkaline Zinc barrel plating machine has to cope with every size and shape.

Installed last year, the machine has six Zinc and two Zinc Nickel plating cells and is capable of plating a thousand kilos of fasteners or other products every hour. It’s amazing to think just how many tonnes of fasteners it will already have plated in its relatively short life. Thanks to its random load programme and automatic features, just one man runs the machine, for the PAL OSST system governs all cycle times and chemical dosage on the machine. It proves a boon to companies like EPC wanting maximum automation and product finish flexibility.

The line played a starring role in a video made by PAL that has already been shown all over the world. The film enables both EPC and PAL customers, and potential customers, to trace the journey undertaken by fasteners as they set off in 48 inch long barrels for their typically 85 minute plating and Chromate Passivation cycle. Made of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene and guaranteed for five years, each barrel can take up to 100 kilos and revolves eight times every minute throughout its journey to ensure adequate product mixing at every stage.

There are three gate transporters which between them can take ten loads per hour when working at maximum capacity, and boast a host of features including a sophisticated belt lift mechanism, SEW motor drive and gear-box, infra red controller for remote manual operation, safety stop frame and – as an additional safety measure – a red light which flashes when the transporter is in motion.

There are six Zinc-plating stations each with submerged anodes, where the load spends up to 40 minutes. EPC customers can choose between yellow, yellow bleach and blue chromate for the Passivation stage. This treatment gives the work long to medium corrosion resistance.

“We are very pleased with how the machine is operating, it does just what it says on the tin!” says Andrew Toon of EPC. “We look forward to a very profitable future.”

And there’s more…..

Alongside the PAL Zinc line at EPC there is an 110 foot long Phosphate line – that’s every bit as automatic as the Zinc line. Built by FTL, PAL’s UK manufacturing base in Warwick, where quick turn round is a speciality, the line with its two gate transporters has many similarities with the larger Zinc line. It uses PAL’s OSST software system, with full data monitoring and produces ten loads each hour. The loading principle is the same as the Zinc line with measured loads – this time of up to 300 kilos - fed into each barrel from the hopper’s pre-weigh chute. At 48 inches wide by 16 inches across the flats, the barrels are the same size as on the PAL Zinc line and made of the same heavy-duty material for a long and productive life. And just like the Zinc line, just one man runs the Phosphate line.

COMING SOON

We are hard at work producing a PAL News special on the general metal finishing market, looking at PAL GMF machines of all sizes around the world and how they are faring.

If you would like a copy of this newsletter when it is published please contact your nearest PAL office and ask them to put your name on the distribution list.