New machinery for painting glass

Most glass processors have been adding value to their product by painting and printing on glass panels. For a number of years this has been driven by:

The demand for kitchen splash backs and bathroom/ wet room panels;
The architect's constant search for more creative use of colour in glass spandrels and panels.

To date, most glass painting is sub-contracted out to specialist paint sprayers but an increasing number of glass processors have installed simple spray-booths to take control of this important process. In order to drive down costs, many are now looking for the type of efficiencies that only automation can bring.

Traditional methods of roller coating and curtain coating glass offer huge production efficiencies but tend to require fairly long production runs of each individual colour. The nature of the current market tends towards:

Small runs – sometimes as low as single panels in a particular colour;
A range of colours covering the entire RAL or BS palette.

In order to offer the flexibility required to achieve the above Peter Hawkins Ltd. is launching the Elmag Compact Evolution automatic spraying machine in Britain & Ireland. The machine was originally developed for painting door panels in the wood working industry. It has, however, been adapted for spraying glass panels and has been supplied to glass companies throughout mainland Europe.

The Compact Evolution is manufactured in Italy by Elmag, a division of the S.C.M Group and a sister company of CMS Brembana (well known here for the supply of CNC Glass machining centres).

For more information contact Peter Hawkins Ltd (tel. 01332 864747, email info@phawkins.co.uk).

Website: www.phawkins.co.uk