Coatings
We develop and apply layers on a material to enhance its surface properties or provide it with new functionalities.
Objective. To reduce the effort to clean plastic pieces.
Our customer wants to improve the cleanliness of a plastic piece of the equipment it produces. This part is in contact with food during its use. Currently this piece needs to be cleaned with a strong detergent when the stain is dry.
This causes a great deal of effort for the end user and can lead to wear or tear problems and damage the material as is subjected to high abrasion in order to keep it clean. The goal is to reduce both, the effort required for cleaning and the use of necessary cleaning agents by using an easy to clean coating.
Solution. Easy to clean coatings and standardized cleaning test.
Our first approach was to define with our client what was ‘easy to clean’ for them, since depending on the sector and equipment, the cleaning needs and requirements are very different.
The second part of the project was to select, apply and optimize 5 different commercial coatings. In this project our customer requested that the coatings to be tested were already commercial, in order to incorporate them into their process very quickly. This selection of coatings was based on ATRIA’s experience and knowledge, taking into account the base material, the type of stain, the residence time of these stains and the usual cleaning method.
Prior to the coating application stage, we carried out an activation study of our client’s plastic, as this is a critical aspect when applying coatings on plastics in order to achieve good adhesion. In this case, tests were carried out with plasma, pyrosil, flame and ozone. For the application of the coating we used both dip-coating and spraying, depending on the coating we were applying.
The next step was to perform standardized cleaning tests. In these tests, we use our abrasion equipment, in which we replace the usual abrasives with sponges or cloths (depending on the requirement of the cleaning tool), and these may or may not be impregnated in the cleaning solution. This equipment allows us to select the speed at which we are going to clean and we also choose how much cleaning pressure we exert. In this way, all cleaning passes are carried out under the same conditions and we can have objective and comparable results.
At this point of the project we can make two types of checks, either clean until the material has the same color as without the stain and count the number of passes needed, or make a fixed number of passes and measure the color change in the sample. In this second case, we measured with a colorimeter the deltaE to know the color change also in a standardized and quantitative way.
The final result consisted of a presentation in which we showed them the best coatings once optimized for their material (%, thickness) combined with the most appropriate activation technique, as well as the results according to the number of passes necessary for the material to recover its appearance without the stain, both with water and with soap at different percentages as well as with their usual strong detergent.
In this way it was easy to determine which option met their requirements and allowed them to offer a differential product, with a property with direct advantages for the user.
