What's new
What's new

How to set up Overhead Crane to move items into Paint bay

BRHMFG

Aluminum
Joined
Oct 9, 2014
Location
South Dakota
We are planning an addition to our shop. The main necessity is a paint area for large items we manufacture. Thinking of going 45' Wide by 80' Long and 20' sidewalls roughly. The Paint area would be on the last 30' of this building. We originally planned to close this off so paint fumes and steam from washing would not enter the rest of shop. We want to put a crane in the 50' part for fabrication area. Now we have located 2 used 5 ton bridges approximately the right width for a good enough price we are considering adding both to our rail. Is there a good way to have the paint bay sort of closed off and still run our crane over the wall to carry things into the paint bay in place of forklift? Best idea we've had is build the wall with a gap for crane. We would still have a doorway in middle, then some sort of flaps to close the gap up there.
 
My two cents - don't have any perforations on the roof or walls if you want a clean area for painting. It invites dust, and also makes venting of fumes to the outside more difficult.

Look into setting up some painting dollies of a few sizes and load capacities. A stiff, low platform, anchoring points, and good wheels (not castors, fixed wheels to go straight in and straight out).

Load your parts on the dollies in front of the painting area, clean/dust everything, then bring into the paint booth. Should give good flexibility and reasonable material handling. Add a couple winch points inside and outside the booth if needed for heavier moves.
 
What kind of finish you looking for? If its less than nibless glass off the gun you can build the room as a tunnel, have the crane run in the tunnel. Place your extraction with a large filter wall at the far end and run the entrance of the tunnel open. Run enough extraction so no vapour escapes the entrance.
With the floor wet down, the masking tight and guys that halfways know what theyre doing, you can get pretty sensible finishes providing the incoming air is reasonably clean.
Super cheap low maintenance setup providing youre allowed to go this way.

Cheers
D
 
Wouldn't the 'gap' for the crane in the roof require that the crane only traveled in that gap? What would happen if you needed to move the load left or right..somewhere there was no gap? Seems like for full versatility there would be a total open space above..sort of kills the idea of a closed paint booth.

The neighboring business had a huge blast room with adjacent paint room. All the fabrications were set on giant trailer affairs and pushed in with a forklift. The doors were then closed and "Bob's your uncle"!

Your crane idea would be super if you could figure a way to make it viable and at the same time seal the paint booth up.

Stuart
 
Kinda like Stuart mentioned,

My shop was where they made the first 6K Parana Iron Workers, there are several bridge cranes, the blast room and spray booth are sealed off and accessed by jib cranes that can swing into the area. There are crane rails inside the blast room but no bridge I think the used a manual chain hoist an free floating bridge in there. The paint booth is inline with the blast room and sliding barn doors on both sides allowed transfer. The floor is smooth and I think they used carts or dollies, the big iron workers made here weighed 5~6000

I also know a guy that has a powder paint line with a racetrack overhead conveyor system. The load parts from pallets or roll them through with carts if to big to hang. Even just getting a bridge crane to exit a building without a spray booth type requirement is a major project and they don't seal well. Opening and closing any aperture above a spray booth is going to introduce dust no matter how you slice it.

Steve
 
The load would still have to travel thru the doorway into the paint room, then it CD travel left or right once through the door.
We are coating ag items where finish is not as critical as body shop. Currently either painting outside or right in the same area we build. So anything will be an improvement. More concerned about keeping fumes and overspray out of the shop than keeping dust from coming in..... .paint room design another topic. Fans, heat recovery, etc. No way we can afford a real commercial paint booth the size we need right now.
 








 
Back
Top