A Determination of Optimal Work-piece Feed Rate on Double Spray Booths to an Oven

Abstract

One of the important processes in cookware manufacturing is a coating process where coating material is sprayed to cover an interior and/or exterior surfaces of a product. Then, the wet coated product must be baked in the oven at a certain temperature profile to dry the wet coated surface. Normally, the spray and baking processes are continuously connected and loading should be balanced. Due to the fact that coating process is faster than that of baking process. Thus, double spray booths are designed to feed the oven. However, if the feeding rate is not optimized, the oven capacity tends not to be fully utilized. This is due to the fact that cookware product is designed in different sizes and shape. The mixed work-pieces are simultaneously coated and baked. Therefore, a feeding pattern and optimal feed rate must be determined to match with oven capacity in order to maximize its capacity. Thus, the objective of this paper is to reveal detailed calculation and its result to achieve this goal and it can be an example for other similar applications. 