Powder coatings for new markets; innovative technologies for coating development

EcoCoatech 2017 in Milano-Rho Exhibition

Decoration workshop

The decoration workshops were born in 2012 to meet the need to achieve finished product with in­creasingly high level in order to guarantee our customers an always higher quality. Decoration process in Sice Pre­vit Company goes from classical finish of the furnishings up to innovative wall finishes which follow contemporary trends, as well as the customers’ stylistic needs. The team consists of seven decorators, each one with his specific and highly professional skills. This close-knit team is the real resource of this department. The passion that cha­racterizes our decorators and their different backgrounds allow having a greater creative capacity thus giving an ad­ded value to the entire productive process… 

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Waterborne UV curing coating for a 5 stars hotel: sustainability and high performances

Overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem, the five-star David Citadel Hotel of Alrov Group, designed in 1998 by Moshe Safdie, the Israeli architect naturalized Canadian winner of the AIA Gold Medal award, is the south side of the Mamilla Quarter, in front of the historic Valley Hinome, according to a

horseshoe plan. The outer covering is made of a rough local limestone, while the interior is covered with wood walls and wood false ceilings.

All common areas, 385 guestrooms and suites have been redesigned and spread over 8 floors of the

building, according to a design by the Italian Lissoni Associati who, by keeping the use of traditional

materials and colours complemented by other alternative ones treated in an original way, designed

the environment as a maze enhanced by the study of natural and artificial light, rich in vegetation.

A rich palette of colours, lights, textured fabrics, parts made of brass treated with different finishes joined with glasses printed on the back, with a central idea connected to the use of wood, oak for the

floor, the heat-treated eucalyptus for the walls and the furniture in the common areas and suites,

characterize and personalize all the areas, both public and the private ones of the rooms.

«The mood of each room is characterised by the prevalence of some "colours" - tells us Alessandro Simonato, manager of the office design of the Tino Sana company located in Almenno S. Bartolomeo (in the province Bergamo) who has been commissioned to manufacture all the furniture - especially the eucalyptus heat-treated dark wood, iron or burnished brass, and the "Mondrian effect" obtained with surfaces made of brass treated  in different ways, mirrors, glasses printed on the back».

Belonging to an international luxury hotel chain with high quality and surface resistance requirements

suggested Tino Sana design office to choose carefully materials and finishes.

«In the rooms – goes on Simonato – we chose, instead of heat-treated eucalyptus wood, some veneered panels with pre-dyed wood coated with waterborne UV curing paints, for "coarse", visual effect so as to enhance the matt wood».

Thanks to the cooperation of Elia Maestroni, Key Account Manager of IVM Chemicals company and the technical support of the R&D laboratory, it has been developed a coating cycle that allows to reach a surface resistance comparable to other non-wood finishes, which is an essential feature for hotel furnishing of a hotel, of course, that is subjected to large mechanical stresses and to the use of detergents for cleaning.

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Harps: artisanal historical masterpieces, waterborne coated by a cutting-edge plant

It is true that an instrument intended for high-level

professional performances, under the judgment of

an expert public, it must guarantee first of all that

the instrument has been built in order to avoid any

inappropriate sounds, but all the productive processes

we visited all even the less important, are so refined, to

understand what means a “Salvi harp”.

We ask Gabriele Dutto, manager of the company

together with we visited the company, if the coating

process of the instrument has only an aesthetic

function; he answered that: «the soundboard,

due to strings’tension- it can reach a carrying capacity

of 1200 kg-tends to deform, even if the parts needed to

built are stored in a well-ventilated and heated room

for about 4 months. For this reason coating in

addition to meet high aesthetic requirements, must be

elastic so that it absorbs the dimensional changes of

the instrument and will not “break” the film».

In brief: all the instrument components are prepared

in the joinery then they area pre-assembled creating

a “raw harp” (as we call it), whose validity is carefully

checked in order to guarantee the right functioning

(the assembly of the various components is so perfect,

that at the end it looks like a unique item).

All the components are then disassembled and coated,

to be next assembled again to built the “definite harp”, at

least in terms of structure, not yet tested in its primary

function, the sound production: the specialists of the

company (harp tuners and harpists), must do it later.

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Tradition, high technology, quality and design in kitchen

THE IMPORTANCE OF FINISHES

Quality furniture requires an appropriate coating,

which meets at the same time, protection and aesthetic

needs, especially now when architects and designers

are increasingly directed towards the use of material

“as it is”.

«We need always more to use “natural effect” coatings

–tells us Nicola Stangherlin architect.

In particular for Minà collection, which includes

modern kitchens (island or wall), which remember the

industrial style ones (with for example many details

made of cast-iron); we needed finishes reproducing

the iron effect (corten, oxidation in its

different shades, zinc).

The coatings’ role is essential: they do not only

reproduce materials, but the effects too, in addition to

have aesthetic and protective functions».

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3D PRINTING BETWEEN MYTH AND REALITY: how are the implications for finishing?

3D printing is one of the fashio­nable “technologies” and accor­ding to many it will fundamen­tally change the way we produce.

The futurologists speculate a scena­rio where traditional factories will di­sappear, swept by a wave of a wide­spread” electronically craft”, able to manufacture small batches (ideally 1 item) of customized products accor­ding to customer requirements.

Someone will remind when in 2000, with the internet spread, we said that traditional stores would disappear.... It did not happen, but the world of bu­siness is still fundamentally changed.

In this article we will try to under­stand the possible implications for manufacturing, and then for fini­shing, starting with the understan­ding of the technology and clarifying some of the words that are beco­ming fashionable.

3D PRINTING

3D printing, refers to various pro­cesses used to create an object by adding successive layers of material

We can see two kind of printing:

• Extrusion or material deposition: various layers are created and depo­sited one after the other to “create” the object.
• For sintering or hardening of mate­rial: in this case, usually with a laser, the object is drawn within paints or powder coating which are hardened by the laser.

In both cases the object is created through layers, as if we would build a mountain adding one section above the other corresponding to the con­tour lines.

The printer receives as input a 3D model of the object to create, re­presented according to a standard language - there are more than one - and it is able to decode the informa­tion into movement instructions for its moving parts, exactly like a paper printer is able to move its head to print a file from a computer.

Let’s see the benefits - typical of the digital transformation of any process – compared to the “traditional” pro­duction:

• Flexibility and cost-effectiveness in particular for small batches: tools and moulds are not required.
• Despecialization: the 3D printer replaces several equipment and traditional processes. For example in a single operation we can create complex shapes which would requi­re material removal after casting or moulding, or even the production of many parts to be assembled.
• Zero or minimum setup time or however minimal: just load the 3D model of the object, and you can start.
• Scalability: with less than 1000 Euros now it is possi­ble to buy home printers for plastic, to create industrial models
• Possibility to create complex objects larger than the printer, dividing them into many parts to be produced on the same printer. Usually the design software supports the division in parts from the finished product

As regards the materials, the most use one is plastic and to follow metal. Then there are applications still on test for wood, food (for example printing of chocolate pra­lines), the electronic circuits, and even the molecules, with achievements in biotechnology or nanotechnology sectors.

The fields of application are extremely various: some are very specialized, such as the prosthetics sectors, with already a good spread in the dental industry, but also in cardiology or artificial limbs sector. Jewellery, and in particular furniture and home accessories industry.

We can even mention buildings created with printers for concrete (opening picture). And of course the industry at large, which we will talk about later.

I would like to end this brief overview on the technology with some considerations.

The first is that it is a rapidly evolving technology. I do not exclude that in a few months there will be innova­tions that overcome the considerations reported in this article. It is hard to draw conclusions, because we are “photographing” an evolving situation.

The second is that technology, even we can imagine ex­tremely interesting application areas, and it is still rather “primitive.”

Chris Anderson, in the book “Makers” to which I refer those who want to know more about this topic, draws a parallel with the traditional desktop printing: today we have at home, for a few hundred Euros, laser printers with photo-quality level; but do you remember the mid- 80’s dot matrix printers?

So we can think that riding on what we call the ‘long wa­ves of innovation, in thirty years or maybe earlier some of the applications, that today are only feasible, will be­come possible. Therefore it is important to distinguish the myths from reality.