Problem solving Painting a Heidelberger printing press - the clean way ...
... with mobile vacuum units for solvents and paint sludge Machines are painted not just to protect them against corrosion but also to make them look good. This goes for printing presses, too. We should not forget that painting a machine is a costly process and that there are special procedures for disposing of the materials used to clean tools and equipment. Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, a manufacturer of printing presses with a production facility at Wiesloch not far from Heidelberg, Germany, knows a thing or two when it comes to the disposal of process waste. The facility at Wiesloch is the largest, most modern manufacturing plant for printing presses in the world. Here, 6,000 employees produce the offset printing presses widely used to print trade magazines and corporate brochures. The paint spraying booths have cleaning baths filled with solvent thinners to clean the spray guns. The contents of baths have to be changed at regular intervals. The dirty cleaning fluid is removed and replaced with clean solvent. To do this the company uses a mobile vacuum unit specially developed for this application by Ruwac Industriesauger GmbH working in collaboration with Mr. Ringel and his team in the Manufacturing Planning department at Wiesloch. The main components of the unit are an Ex-proof industrial vacuum, a pre-separator for the paint sludge and a reservoir tank for the clean solvent. The operator vacuums up the dirty contents of the cleaning bath. The dirty fluid, solvent mixed with paint sludge, is drawn into the pre-separator and held in the pre-separator's 200-litre system drum. A demister mat and a float in the pre-separator cover ensure that the turbulent paint sludge does not reach the vacuum downstream. An Ex-proof drum pump fitted with a filler gun can be used to transfer the drum contents to a central disposal tank. This method is used to empty the used solvent from the cleaning bath. The bath is filled with new solvent from another 200-litre, stainless steel system drum which is also fitted with an Ex-proof drum pump and filler gun. Inspection plugs on the bottom of both drums are used to check and remove any deposits present. The vacuum is a standard Type DS 1220 EX unit made from conductive reinforced glass fibre and driven by a 2.5 kW, Ex-rated AC motor.
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