Zero Defect Manufacturing in Non-Contact Coating Quality Control

Furniture manufacturing companies of all sizes and their customers have identified that one of the key challenges they face is ensuring the quality of paint or lacquer curing (hereinafter – coating). If furniture surfaces are not sufficiently well cured, consumers and end-users may be exposed to unhealthy volatile organic compounds (regulated by e.g., the European VOC directive) and the lifetime of the products is diminished. Today the standard practice is to conduct curing inspection manually on samples by using methods such as “scratching”, visual checking, temperature measurement or brilliance monitoring of the cured object. Also, quality control is conducted by measuring the energy output from the UV-curing lamps, which periodically must be replaced as they gradually lose power/ potential. However, there is no solution that would guarantee zero defects, automated quality control and quality data collection. The manufacturing companies and the coating industry are actively looking for alternative solutions that are cheap, fast and reliable and guarantee the quality of their products. And – very important – perform automated measurement on the actual item.

The proposed solution to this problem is Multicursor – an IoT sensor system that controls and documents the curing quality of individual furniture items in a non-contact way in live production environments. The sensor system identifies curing levels in 3D structures (surface, depth) and consists of a thermographic camera and ultrasound sensor. The system makes production quality control faster, consistent and enables zero-defect manufacturing through real-time monitoring and collection of valuable data. In turn, manufacturers are able to improve the quality control process of furniture production, prevent potential business losses and bring the factories closer to Industry 4.0.