Rottne Industry celebrate their 50th anniversary with a new Finishing System

What originally started as Borjes Mechanical with the Borjeloader, became Rottne Industry. The Swedish company manufacture harvesters and forwarders for the forestry industry. 

250 employees manufacture approx. 200 machines per year. The main production is in Rottne, where product development, service and training is also located. The biggest forwarders, the Rottne SMV-Rapid, are manufactured in the facilities situated in North Sweden, Stensele. The third manufacturing unit in Lenhovda produces loaders and wagons.

The company is owned by Borje Karlsson and his family, with three key persons in the company management. A harvester, such as the H20, is worth 0.5 million Euro and customers demand a lasting surface treatment with a top finish. All products are coated as components and thereafter assembled as a ready-to-deliver machine. It is therefore extremely important that all the components in the machine have the same shade and appearance. To satisfy the high demands of end-users, Rottne Industry invested in a Graco finishing system for their production units. The choice was the ProMix proportioner with automatic colour changes.

Improved finish quality and resistance

Graco’s patented proportioning in sequence by volume, with monitoring of real-time mixing and the option to download production data to a factory network, were key features that had an impact on the choice of Graco’s 2K system. Since the viscosity and temperature of components can vary from batch to batch, a frequent gun triggering could have had a negative impact on the accuracy of the dosing. An overdose of either component would have been directly visible in the finishing touch. With sequence dosing and electronic monitoring in ProMix, this problem will never occur.

ProMix incorporates an automatic colour change system for 4 colours with programmable flushing sequences for the most economical purge system. A gun flush box is installed to further optimise the flushing and loading of the Pro Xs 4 AA electrostatic gun. The fluid panel is located in the paint mix room and fed by Merkur pumps with a ratio of 40:1 from 55-gallon drums.

In order to be prepared for the next generation of waterborne materials, Graco distributor Smekano installed cover-mounted agitators in elevators, all in stainless steel. Becker-Syntema suggested oxiranester, a modified epoxy system, with 65% solid content. In comparison with the earlier alkyd paint system, with only 45% solid content, Rottne will achieve a better finish and resistance whilst simultaneously considerably lowering the VOC rate. Both the outdoor and indoor environments with the workers' health in consideration is of great importance to Rottne and ProMix will contribute to improving this.

Smekano also installed a ProMix system in the factory in North Sweden, Stensele, where a new set-up with two gun flush boxes on a ProMix is also working to satisfaction.

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