Alpego painting plant

FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY SPECIAL ISSUE ON ACE & OFF ROAD VEHICLES A “Cartesian” Coating System and a New Pre-Treatment Process to Increase Corrosion Resistance Fivefold. Alpego:When Chemistry Matters. Alessia Venturi ipcm® Providing a coating with corrosion resistance properties is never a one-man show, but rather teamwork involving all the different elements that make up a painting process. Alpego Spa, a global leading manufacturer of agricultural machinery, is well aware of this. Its new pre-treatment cycle developed by ALIT Technologies with Alufinish products, combined with an unconventional coating line that is perfectly suited to its needs, has increased its products’ salt spray resistance fivefold. © ipcm One of the agricultural machines included in Alpego’s range of products. 72 N. 72 - NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 - international PAINT&COATING magazine

FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY The agricultural, construction, and © ipcm construction machinery (ACE) sector is comparable to the automotive one in © ipcm terms of plant engineering, painting, outdoor resistance, and, last but not least, coating General view of the pre-treatment tunnel and the drying oven after the pre-treatment stage. sustainability requirements. Not only does the heavy machinery and off-road vehicle market now demand finishes with a “bodywork” aesthetic quality degree comparable to those applied by automotive OEMs, but the issues of the durability and the mechanical, chemical, and corrosion resistance of coatings is also just as central as in the car industry. Although the coating departments typically set up in the two industries are not comparable, not least because in the ACE sector the metal masses involved are very large and therefore require very different plant arrangements than in a classic automotive paintshop, the issues of sustainability, energy efficiency, and the environmental impact of paint systems are equally important. For both sectors, the key process for guaranteeing the durability of coatings is surface pre-treatment. Only a perfectly deoxidised, clean, passivated surface with the correct surface roughness value can guarantee excellent adhesion of the paint film and increase its resistance to corrosion. Clearly, once the ideal pre-treatment has been found, it must also be integrated in a process context where the coating products and their application are handled as efficiently and effectively as possible. Alpego Spa (Almisano, Vicenza, Italy) is a company aiming at optimising agricultural production with its machines by listening to the needs of a constantly evolving sector. Its experience in this respect is paradigmatic. After years of intensive study of all possible coating system solutions, which required seven visits to the PaintExpo trade fair in Germany and countless trips around Europe to analyse its competitors’ choices, Alpego spent four years planning its perfect painting plant, which was finally completed in 2014. international PAINT&COATING magazine - NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 - N. 72 73

SPECIAL ISSUE ON ACE & OFF ROAD VEHICLES © ipcm Components of agricultural machinery being powder coated. Its collaboration with Alit Technologies (San Bonifacio, Verona, Italy), pickled sheets are purchased in Sweden, which is a leading producer a supplier of pre-treatment products that is the Italian distributor of in the sector, and the remaining 10% of purchased parts are made in German Alufinish products, was strategic in achieving its corrosion Germany and the United States. resistance targets. Since its foundation, Alpego has boasted constant growth in all international markets, with double-digit increases in terms of both About Alpego number of machines produced and turnover, reaching the threshold of It is in the middle of the Veneto region, one of the richest and most 40 million Euros in 2021 with 190 employees. industrialised areas in Italy, covered in vineyards and surrounded by the • Today, the company has three plants with a total area of 41,000 m2, of splendid Dolomite Alps, that Alpego was founded in the 1980s as a small which 15,000 are covered: family business. It is still 100% owned by the Pegoraro family, now in its • Almisano: the new headquarters since 2012, covering over 21,000 third generation. Flail mowers, subsoilers, tillers, rotary cultivators, seed m2. It houses the administrative, technical, and sales offices, a large drills, fertilisers, vineyard equipment, power harrows, and cultivators assembly department, the coating line, a machine dispatch area, and a make up the vast product range of Alpego, which manufactures 4000 spare parts warehouse. machines a year. • Gambellara: the company’s first headquarters, now housing a All products continue to be conceived and designed in-house in carpentry shop with advanced laser cutting systems, press brakes, and order to maintain the complete know-how of each individual project. welding robots. The company always reinvests 4% of its turnover in research and • Lonigo: an assembly service plant that was recently acquired in order development and it has 40 active patents and trademarks. For the to increase production capacity. sake of quality and reliability, Alpego’s machines also continue to be Alpego has a wide sales network consisting of numerous importers and produced in-house or with the help of high quality Italian suppliers. 80% dealers, as well as two European subsidiaries, Alpego France and Alpego of the components purchased are produced in Italy, while high-strength UK. 74 N. 72 - NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 - international PAINT&COATING magazine

FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY The development of an unusual were collaborating with Alit Technologies, which coating system supplied us with phosphodegreasing products. Our “Alpego has always coated its machines in-house,” workpieces, mainly made of thick (8-10 mm) black states Luciano Pegoraro, the current owner of iron sheets, called for an aggressive pickling process Alpego together with his brother Giovanni. “Painting in order to obtain surfaces suitable for high quality is too important to be assigned to an external painting. The only alternative would have been to supplier. At our original Gambellara site, we had a combine chemical pre-treatment with a controlled conventional liquid coating line with an overhead shot blasting phase. However, once again, our line conveyor, a classic “ring” with a phosphodegreasing did not allow us to do that.” and a drying station, two painting booths for primer “Despite several adjustments to the pre-treatment and top coat application, and a final baking oven. cycle, with the coating products and plant conditions We used to apply a high-solids coating system but, of the time, we could not make Alpego’s products although we complied with atmospheric emission achieve a salt spray resistance value over 170 hours,” limits, we wanted to switch to water-soluble says Loris Rossi, the CEO of Alit Technologies, the products. However, our plant’s design did not enable EMEA distributor of Alufinish products. “The pre- us to do so. Too many parameters would have treatment tunnel presented a major problem of had to be monitored and adjusted to achieve high rinsing water pollution and the quality of surface quality coating results with water-soluble products: preparation could not be further improved without the process was incompatible with the plant itself. modifying the plant.” In addition, we needed to increase the corrosion “Based on all these reasons, in the early 2000s we resistance of our machines, as many of them were decided that it was necessary to invest in a new exported by sea. Already with that old plant, we coating line,” adds Luciano Pegoraro. “However, I did © ipcm Finished components hanged onto the coating line designed by Tekimp of Castelfranco Veneto, Italy.

SPECIAL ISSUE ON ACE & OFF ROAD VEHICLES not want to install a traditional has been able to achieve line with a two-rail conveyor a salt spray resistance again. I found the layout of those value of 500 to 700 lines too rigid for our production hours but, above all, it flow. Moreover, this type of plants has achieved excellent takes up too much space: in fact, quality consistency. “This the first project submitted to us was a great team effort,” covered more than half of our comments Luciano new Almisano plant. Pegoraro. “Alit already “We therefore decided on a made sure we achieved clear change in several areas of good pre-treatment our production flow. First of all, results despite the we changed our raw material: difficult conditions of the from black iron, we switched previous line: with the to buying only pickled sheet new plant, the results are metal, mainly from Sweden. © ipcm top notch!” Secondly, we implemented laser Luciano Pegoraro with Loris Rossi in front of several Alpego’s “Alpego placed great cutting operations on sheet agricultural machines ready to be shipped all over the world. trust in Alit. We already metal in order to eliminate had a good business as much as possible the problem of oxidation on high thicknesses. relationship that had started when working on the old line, also thanks Thirdly, we specified a water-based coating system consisting of an to the proximity between their factory and Alit’s,” says Loris Rossi. epoxy primer and a two-component acrylic top coat and we started “Then, the four years spent on designing this plant were years of considering using powder coatings, which we then actually did. Finally, mutual technical growth and exchange of knowledge and experience. at PaintExpo we were inspired to no longer design a ring system but a Alit felt valued by Alpego and we worked closely to fine-tune all line of stations, based on a concept that is completely different from chemical aspects.” conventional plants.” “Although a few changes were made during the construction phase, the path mapped out in the design phase proved to be correct, in Quintupling corrosion resistance with the right terms of both plant engineering and chemistry,” notes Pegoraro. chemicals, applied with the right equipment Tekimp (Treviso, Italy) designed for Alpego a compact, functional A new, challenging scenario plant that Pegoraro defines as “Cartesian” and storage buffer-free, to Working with the new system entailed a total change of paradigm emphasise the absence of a classic conveyor in favour of a handling for Alpego, from painting complete machines to coating individual process using trolleys that take the workpieces to the relevant components. “Initially, the system seemed gigantic compared to treatment stations, following pre-set routes that are independent of what we had before, so we had a few problems making it work well,” each other. The plant also includes an in-line modular shot blasting indicates Pegoraro. machine, which performs fine shot blasting of high thickness (8-10 “For the first four years, we only applied liquid coatings. Then, in 2018, mm) parts. These components undergo two pre-treatment phases, we implemented a one-coat powder finishing process by installing first mechanical and then chemical with the new Alufinish system, a Gema automatic booth, separating the components that could be while thin sheet metal parts only undergo the chemical pre-treatment powder coated from those that could not. The new painting line is process. Each load bar can be assigned a different shot blasting grade. very complex in terms of production scheduling software: start-up and The Alufinish pre-treatment cycle supplied by Alit Technologies industrialisation were difficult. Now, almost eight years later, the plant’s includes a strongly alkaline degreasing stage at 55 °C for 10 minutes, capacity is saturated and we would need a new one. Over the last two rinses with mains water, a nanotechnology passivation stage, few years, in addition to the painting plant, we have invested 7 million a rinse with demineralised water, and a drying stage. With this new Euros in Industry 4.0-oriented production machinery. Now, we are pre-treatment process, combined with the selected coatings, Alpego ready for new coating challenges!” 76 N. 72 - NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 - international PAINT&COATING magazine

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