Application of Air Ionizer to Remove Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) Dust for Plastics Material in Automotive Painting Process

Muhammad Hafizan Yosri; Pauziah Muhamad; Norfazrina Hayati Mohd Yatim

Authors

Muhammad Hafizan Yosri Intelligent Dynamics & System Research Lab, Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Pauziah Muhamad Intelligent Dynamics & System Research Lab, Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Norfazrina Hayati Mohd Yatim Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kulliyyah of Engineering, International Islamic University Malaysia, 50728 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Keywords:

Air ionizer, electrostatic charge, particle concentration, automotive painting line

Abstract

In the painting production process, repairing of painted defects by running the part through repeat process, together with the essential requirement of quality control routines, contribute for a very large proportion for the operating costs. The dust and fibred efects which ranged between 40% and 50% found tobe the highest rejection in of the local painting line manufacturer. Both defect not only affected the visual appearance but also the of the parts performance. The objective of this researchis to explore the effectiveness of the air ionizer device to reduce the electrostatic value of the painted material that attract the foreign particlet of all into painted surface. By doing so, the rejection contributes by dust and fibre particle in the automotive painting can be reduce. The ionizeris an effective application to replace the conventional methods which applied the air blow process to remove dust and fibre particle before painting process. The experiment has been conducted by measuring the electrostatic value of the raw material before and after the ionizer treatment. The correlation between the static value and the production pass rate also has been examined. The result shows 0.34% reduction of the fibre particle after the implementation of the ionizer device.