A Coat of Many Colors

Custom car builders can put their best work into the engine and upholstery, but at a show most people won’t see beyond the paint. If the paint is thin, or thick and full of runs, the car is not going to bring home trophies. The same goes for off-highway equipment, although the job expected of paint in this industry goes beyond looking good and standing up to regular applications of wax. Show trophies give way to machine up-time and ROI. For off-highway equipment, the finish coat provides protection against the tough conditions in which the machines operate every day.

For more than 50 years, Getman Corp., Bangor, MI, has been supplying diesel-powered support vehicles for underground coal and hard rock mines. Products include the low-profile RDG-1504C Roadbuilder motor grader as well as tow tractors, pallet loaders, lube trucks, and scalers; the latter used to safely remove slabs of loose rock from the mine’s roof and face. Getman recently completed the first prototype in its Getman Transport series, a line of people movers that will eventually replace its existing TerraPro personnel carriers.

Mining can destroy even the best finish coat. “Whether it’s a coal mine in the United States or zinc mine in Australia, there are acids in the water that are found during the excavation of the ore body, and the machines are driven through it daily,” says Dana Getman, president of the company founded by his father. “Any machine that is imperfectly painted will have serious corrosion problems in a short amount of time.”

Then there’s the driving technique known as ribbing. “For some operators, if they can’t quite get around a corner,” says Getman, “they will hit the wall [known as a rib] because it helps them get the machine around the corner.”

Physically, Getman machines held up well, but there were challenges to be overcome with the painting process in Bangor. Improvements needed to be made in the amount of time required to fully dry, and how little time the coat held up to environmental conditions. Then, a customer’s comment hit home: “For years, we have thought it is important to emphasize the quality of our machines, including reliability and durability,” says Getman. “A U.S. coal miner came to visit the plant, and in the course of talking, he said I shouldn’t be overly satisfied with my painting process. I guess I knew that, but I never had anyone say it. The comment hastened the process to do something about our paint.”

Getman paints complete machines onsite in a single-stall paint booth, giving it the flexibility needed to build the custom machines required by the mines.

“Internally we were experiencing production issues with our final paint set up, which would take up to 12 hours to dry,” says Erik VanAllen, senior director of operations, Getman Corp. “After the finish coat was applied to the machine, it may have to sit there for a shift and a half. When production volume picked up, if we painted a truck in the morning, we couldn’t do any more painting until the next day. Everything staged outside, creating a significant bottle neck.”

While it was impossible to make all the hazards associated with the mine environment go away, VanAllen and Dana Getman knew they could do something to accelerate the production flow and improve how the product looked upon delivery, or when parked for a few weeks in a dealer’s lot. “We were considering a third shift or at least splitting the paint booth,” says VanAllen.

The company looked at other finishing options, including powder coating or installing larger ovens to bake the paint, but they were expensive. Some reduced the drying time, but not enough to justify the additional expense.

Take the call

Then VanAllen got a call from David Keller, national sales manager for Baril Coatings USA, Angola, IN. He had some interesting things to say about Baril’s Dual Cure Chemistry (DCC) product.