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Xtreme™ Mix Proportioner

Ideal For Shipyard Contractor’s Protective Coating Applications

APPLICATION STORY, 01-02-2004
PROTECTIVE COATING / PLURAL COMPONENT

ABC Applicators, Mobile, AL, is a sandblasting and coatings contractor that specializes in new construction and rework contracts in local shipyards. We’re usually spraying 100 percent solids tank linings or other specialty materials designed to protect the ship’s interior from rust and corrosion.” And although the shipyard work is enough to keep the Vickers’ busy, they also paint all the buoys deployed by the Coast Guard on all U.S. interior and coastal waterways. The company has used a lot of different application equipment during their three decades as shipyard painters. Our sprayer of choice is Graco’s Xtreme Mix proportioning system.” According to ABC, the Xtreme Mix is well suited for their type of work. “When we bid a job the coating material is already specified in the spec sheet.

Usually the material is a plural component epoxy with material ratios that range up and down the scale.” This hasn’t been a problem for ABC Applicators because the Xtreme Mix offers variable ratio selections from 1:1 to 10:0 with ratio accuracy of +5 percent. It’s been able to handle all the coatings they’ve been required to spray. “There hasn’t been a single instance where the Xtreme Mix wasn’t able to correctly proportion the material we’re spraying. In addition, there have been times when we’ve had to change materials and material ratios during the day. In these cases, we simply purge the fluid hose, switch materials, enter the new ratio into the control panel on the proportioner and the painters are ready to go. It takes only five minutes and we don’t waste a drop of paint.” It’s a lot simpler and faster than having to mechanically reconfigure the system.

The painters usually spray two coats of an anti-foulant and one coat of topcoat. Furthermore, since the Xtreme Mix proportions and mixes the base and catalyst on demand, material waste has dropped significantly. The alternative to proportioning the plural component materials was to hand-mix the two components. Hand-mixing always resulted in leftover material that had to be properly disposed of because of the mixed material’s short pot life. Often, the cost of disposing this cured material was as high or higher than the materials’ original per-gallon price.

“We’ve cut material waste by 50 percent,” says ABC. “Material savings alone allowed us to recoup the cost of the Xtreme Mix in only six months.” That’s a significant return on investment! Deadlines are another fact of life in the shipyards. “When a ship is in one of these yards for repair or maintenance, it could be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars every day. We have a very strict timeline to get our work done,” he says. “There are no excuses! Speed and equipment reliability are essential.”

“Typically, we run a multi-gun operation with the Xtreme Mix. We use 100-150 feet of fluid hose from the proportioner to each airless spray gun. Even with three painters spraying 100 percent solids paint, we have enough fluid pressure to atomize the material properly.” The Xtreme Mix also features Viscon® HP fluid heaters that allow the system to maintain consistent material temperature and fluid viscosity for uniform atomization. The painters achieve the best atomization of these 100 percent solids protective coatings using Graco’s .415 to .423 spray tips. The narrower fan pattern is especially well suited for spraying among pipes.

ABC also appreciates the proportioning system’s durability. “It’s a simple system,” he says. “Our own maintenance crew can keep the system in tiptop shape. It’s easy to perform routine maintenance on it and if we ever have to tear it down, we do it in our own shop. On the other hand, we’ve used equipment that had to be sent back to the manufacturer its distributor for repair. That’s not acceptable with the deadlines we work under. “It’s portable. It’s reliable. And the price was right. It’s been a good investment,” he concludes.