Customers take a shine to PPG lab's new flatline: W&WP visits PPG Wood Coatings' product development lab, where a new flatline finishing line helps the company adapt to its new niche. (Finishing Newsfront).

PPG Wood Coatings shifted its emphasis from furniture to prefinished flooring and cabinetry in the mid-1990s, a plus for sales but a problem for a company product development lab in Greensboro, NC.

Though PPG's customer list is entirely industrial, it is broad-based and includes manufacturers of RTA and other furniture, interior doors, cabinets and flooring. Randy Friebele, PPG's technical service and facility manager, says PPG now sells coatings to 85 percent of the North American prefinished flooring market. The company also has customers in Europe and South America, and is developing business in Asia as well.

The lab helps customers work out problems they might encounter with a finish, and also tests new finishes the company creates at customers' requests. But even though the lab's focus shifted, PPG's equipment for testing and demonstrating finishes was still geared to the furniture industry. Much of it was unsuited to developing coatings for customers who used a flatline finishing process.

There were only two coating machines, recalls Friebele. If technicians wanted to replicate the multi-step finishing process customers use on their flatline systems, they had to use those two coaters to apply stain, filler, sealer and top coat, stopping to clean them between applications.

Two Did Work Of Five

"We were limited to only two machines to do what would be between a five or nine-coat process. It would be like trying to put on several colors with only one paint brush," Friebele says.

There were other problems. In order to dry a finish between steps, technicians would hand-carry a part from a coater to a UV lamp. "If you're walking around with a wet part, it can get dirty," says Friebele.

The lab's limitations caused problems for customers as well as employees, Friebele says. Customers found they couldn't always get their work done when they wanted, because the lab could handle only one job at a time.

PPG decided in 1996 to begin a $1 million renovation of the entire laboratory building, which includes the demonstration and testing lab and two smaller labs used for product development and color styling.

Before designing the demonstration lab, Friebele and other technical employees huddled not only with experts from equipment equipment supplier Stiles Machinery, but with PPG Wood Coatings customers to determine what was needed.

Modular System

Stiles and PPG solved the problem by coming up with a $500,000 flatline system organized into four coating modules and one sanding/brush scuffing module. Components include UV equipment, a high-velocity oven for drying stains, and a brush machine from Cefla, a sander by Butfering and roll coaters from Sorbini.

Each module can run separately, or the entire line can run as a unit. "If Rachel (color stylist Rachel Fried) wants to apply a stain and do nothing else, she can," Friebele says. "But if a customer wants to see our whole operation, we can do it all at once."

The coating module where stain is applied also includes the Cefla-made warm air oven for evaporating water and solvent from stain. Stains are the only products used that contain solvents; all PPG sealers and topcoats are solvent-free.

Each coating module has its own UV drying system, also Cefla-made, so there's no more walking around the lab, wet part in hand, to find a dryer.

The lab also includes a spray booth for cabinet doors, which can't be finished with a flatline system because of their irregular surfaces, and a UV curing oven for top coats that was developed by PPG and Union Carbide and installed several years ago. The oven replicates different lamps that customers may be using to dry topcoats, so the lab can make the process as similar to the customer's as possible.

Looking For A Match

PPG's color lab, operating in a separate section of the building from the demonstration lab, matches stains sent in by customers. Color stylists carefully measure out drops of liquid, concoct formulas to match stains, and entered them in a computer controlling the dispensing room.

Dispensers squeeze out the amount of each shade the formula called for, which are then mixed. A spectrophotometer measures a sample of the just-mixed stain against the formula to ensure that all the ingredients called for are present in the right amounts. The color stylists also scrutinize the mixtures visually.

PPG creates matching stains for mouldings and flooring when customers ask. Its Olympic stain products for Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse are in this category. And it will go to great lengths to satisfy special requests, like a flecked wood stain that looks like laminate. That finish is used by an RTA furniture manufacturer to cover the wood parts the manufacturer uses in its predominantly laminated furniture.

Wood Coatings chemists can manipulate other properties as well. Several years ago, they developed an aluminum oxide coating that had high abrasion resistance. It was developed at the urging of Bruce Hardwood Floors to enhance its WearMaster product line. One of PPG's current technical challenges is developing a finish that is scratch resistant yet retains its gloss, which Friebele says is also a customer request.

Wood coatings is a constantly changing category, and Friebele thinks the new lab is already helping PPG keep up with two new developments: the move of kitchen cabinetmakers to flatline systems for frames, and globalization of Wood Coatings' customer base.

Switching To Flatline

Two cabinetmaker customers of PPG are using the flatline systems for frames, he said, a switch that took place within the last year and a half. "Flatline finishing is so much faster than spray, tremendously faster," Friebele says.

Friebele estimates that spray lines have a maximum output of about 15 feet a minute, and in practice generally achieve 5 to 10 feet per minute. "Flatlines can move between 30 and 70 feet a minute. The parts go much faster, you can finish them a lot easier.

"The transfer efficiency is 100 percent compared to spray," he said. "There's no coating loss going up in a spray booth." PPG pushed for conversion to flatline systems by helping adapt flatline systems to cabinets and developing coatings especially for flatline application, he added.