Spring surface flocking method

Abstract

To provide a hair planting method for spring surface which relates to a field of metal surface hair planting, and achieves high degree of fiber fixation after curing.SOLUTION: A hair planting method includes: a loading step S1 at which a spring enters a production line together with a conveyance chain; an electrostatic adhesive spray application step S2 at which the spring enters an automatic production line together with the conveyance chain; an electrostatic hair planting step S3 at which the spring after adhesive spray application enters an electrostatic hair planting chamber for the purpose of hair planting; a curing step S4 at which the spring after hair planting enters a dryer for the purpose of drying; an excess fiber removal step S5 at which the spring passes a brush, and compressed air is blown onto a surface of the spring, whereby excess fiber on the surface of the brush is removed; and an unloading step S6 at which the spring after hair planting is taken down and placed in a package. This method is suitable for wire springs such as circular, elliptical wire springs and so on, and is suitable for a surface of coating such as electro-deposition coating, zinc-aluminum coating and so on.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 1

Description

[Technical field]

[0001] The present invention relates to the field of flocking of metal surfaces, and in particular to a method for flocking of spring surfaces. [Background technology]

[0002] With the improvement of people's quality of life, people are increasingly pursuing a quiet and comfortable environment. When a spring is moving, the contact between the metal surface and the outside or inside of the spring generates high decibel noise, so in order to achieve the effect of reducing friction and noise, springs with flocking on the surface of the spring body are commercially available.

[0003] At present, in China, flocking is mostly applied to non-metallic parts, mainly for decoration. There is no ability to design and develop automated spring flocking lines. Only a few factories carry out manual flocking, but they cannot achieve continuous production and the production efficiency is low. In addition, the thickness of the flocks is uneven, so the thickness requirements cannot be guaranteed, and the stability and reliability are low, resulting in great uncertainty in practical use.

[0004] When applying traditional flocking methods to the surface of some special shaped wires, such as oval wires and elliptical wires, the requirements of adhesive and fiber thickness cannot be guaranteed.

[0005] Existing fibers for manual flocking are freely scattered on the adhesive-coated surface of the flocked parts, which means that the fibers cannot be directly inserted into the adhesive, leading to unstable fiber firmness, and during use with friction, some fibers will fall off during use, reducing reliability and causing the fallen fibers to contaminate other parts.

[0006] Conventional flocked springs are all formed by spraying adhesive and electrostatic flocking, and after formation, the flocking process is applied to both the inside and outside of the spring. The fibers planted inside the spring body not only do not reduce friction, but also increase the inner and outer diameters of the spring, so in many systems with a relatively small design space, the increase in the inner and outer diameters of the spring makes it very difficult to design and assemble the spring.

[0007] In order to improve the rust-proofing performance of the spring, it is necessary to perform an anti-rust treatment on the metal surface. Currently, the flocked springs applied to the electric tailgates on the market are flocked on the electrocoat paint surface of the bottom anti-rust coating. However, the wastewater generated by the electrocoat paint causes environmental problems. Furthermore, the electrophoretic coating is a sealed coating, and once the coating is damaged by a foreign object, rust will occur quickly and spread gradually. A zinc-aluminum coating is used as the coating on the spring surface. However, when a general adhesive is applied to the surface of the zinc-aluminum coating, the adhesive cannot be firmly absorbed into the surface of the coating, and therefore may be easily scraped off.

[0008] For this reason, those skilled in the art are devoted to developing a method for implanting hair on the surface of a spring, which automatically sprays adhesive to implant hair so that the adhesive and fibers have a stable thickness, and are devoted to designing an electrostatic implantation method for implanting hair, which is different from the traditional spray application method and meets the requirements even for implanting hair on the surface of a wire with a special shape. Summary of the Invention

[0009] In view of the above-mentioned shortcomings of the prior art, the technical problem solved by the present invention is to design a fully automatic hair flocking line that is applied to the hair flocking of the spring surface instead of the manual hair flocking, and achieves continuous production and has high production efficiency. In addition, the thickness of the adhesive and the thickness of the fiber are stabilized by automatically performing adhesive spray application and hair flocking. Unlike the traditional spray application method, the electrostatic hair flocking method is designed for hair flocking, and meets the requirement of uniform hair flocking on the surface of a special-shaped wire. When electrostatic hair flocking is used, after the adhesive is cured, the firmness of the fiber is high, and the surface substrate is not exposed even after 40,000 fiber fixity tests. The spring is fully compressed by tooling, and then placed in the hair flocking device together with the tooling. This ensures that the hair flocking is only realized on the outer surface of the spring, and the outer and inner ring positions are not flocked. The adhesive imported from overseas is used to improve the adhesion of the surface of the zinc-aluminum coating. The zinc-aluminum coating and the electroplating coating can be used simultaneously on the surface.

[0010] In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a method for implanting hair on a spring surface, which includes at least the following steps: A hook is used to secure the spring above the conveyor chain, which then enters the production line. During the adhesive spray application, the adhesive is sprayed by a nozzle and negatively charged. The spring is grounded or connected to zero potential. The adhesive is uniformly attracted to the spring surface by electrostatic attraction. After the adhesive is sprayed on the spring, it enters the electrostatic flocking chamber for flocking. The spring is grounded or connected to zero potential. Then, when the fiber touches the spring surface during the movement, the fiber will be perpendicular to the spring surface in the orthogonal direction and will be inserted into the adhesive by the action of electrostatic attraction. After the hair is implanted, the springs are placed in a drying device for drying. After drying, the springs are passed through a brush and the surface of the spring is blown with compressed air to remove excess fibers from the surface of the spring. The springs are then loaded and trimmed of excess fibre before being taken down and placed into packaging.

[0011] Also, as the spring advances through the production line, it rotates on its own axis, ensuring that the adhesive and fibres can be evenly applied to the spring surface during implantation.

[0012] Also, a photoelectric sensor switch controls the adhesive spray application operation, and when the sensor switch detects the spring, the electrostatic adhesive spray application device starts operation.

[0013] In addition, the adhesive spray application device can control the thickness of the adhesive to 0.05 mm to 0.2 mm by adjusting the flow rate of the adhesive.

[0014] The electrostatic flocking chamber is composed of a high voltage electric field with a negative voltage at the bottom and a positive voltage at the top. Under the action of the high voltage electrostatic field, the fibers move in the direction of the magnetic induction lines, and are continuously charged and discharged. The use of high frequency alternating current has a high utilization rate of fiber adsorption. The density of the fibers is controlled by the speed of the conveyor belt. The springs are connected to zero potential, and there is no need to discharge the springs at the end.

[0015] The fibers are made of nylon PA66 or polyester PE66, and have a fineness of 3.3 dtex (decitex) and a length of 0.5 mm to 1.0 mm.

[0016] The drying temperature is 70° C. to 200° C., and the drying time is 20 minutes to 1 hour.

[0017] Also, step S5 further includes collecting the fibers blown off the spring with a fiber collector.

[0018] The method also includes a step of flocking the outer surface of the spring, and in particular includes the following steps: (1) Placing a spring inside a metal rod with one end fixed, compressing the spring with a compression device, and then inserting a metal plug pin into the other end of the metal rod to fix the spring; (2) connecting the compressed spring together with the metal rod to a conveying device for surface implantation; And, (3) The spring is lowered and returned to the compression device for compression, and then the plug pin is removed to release the spring.

[0019] The metal surface of the spring is also coated with an electrocoat or zinc-aluminum coating.

[0020] The springs are also made from circular, elliptical, or oval wire.

[0021] The method further includes an electric dust collection step prior to spray application of the adhesive in step S2.

[0022] In addition, in the spray application of the adhesive in step S2, the adhesive can be applied uniformly by roll coating.

[0023] The drying device also includes an infrared heater or an electric heater and a temperature adjustment device.

[0024] Also, the high voltage electric field has a voltage of 80,000 volts.

[0025] The electrodeposition coating or zinc-aluminum coating has a thickness of 15 μm to 20 μm.

[0026] The adhesive used for spray application has a viscosity of 2500 Cst to 3500 Cst (centistokes).

[0027] A fully automatic flocking line is designed to be applied to the flocking process on the spring surface instead of the manual flocking process according to the present invention, so as to achieve continuous production and have high production efficiency. Moreover, the adhesive and fibers are stable in thickness due to the automatic adhesive spray application and flocking. The present invention uses electrostatic flocking for flocking. In addition to round wire springs, electrostatic flocking can also be applied to other special-shaped wires such as oval wires and oblong wires. It has a wide range of applications. The present invention uses electrostatic flocking, in which the fibers are flocked to the adhesive by electrostatic adsorption, to achieve a high degree of fiber adhesion after curing. There is no fiber falling off, which affects the performance of the spring and pollutes other parts and the environment. The present invention uses a special adhesive imported from overseas, which can be simultaneously applied to the flocking process on the surface with electroplating coating and zinc-aluminum coating.

[0028] In order to fully understand the objects, features, and advantages of the present invention, the concept, specific configuration, and technical advantages of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. [Brief description of the drawings]

[0029] [Figure 1] 1 is a flow chart of a spring implantation process according to one preferred embodiment of the present invention. [Diagram 2] FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a spring according to one preferred embodiment of the present invention, in which a portion of the outer surface of the spring is flocked. [Diagram 3] FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of the principle of electrostatic flocking according to one preferred embodiment of the present invention; [Figure 4] FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of fibers on a metal surface according to one preferred embodiment of the present invention. [Diagram 5] FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a single tray of material entering adhesive spray application and flocking according to one preferred embodiment of the present invention. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

[0030] In the following, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings in order to make the technical contents of the present invention clearer and easier to understand. The present invention can be embodied in various forms of embodiments, and the scope of protection of the present invention is not limited to the embodiments described in this specification.

[0031] In the drawings, the same reference numbers indicate components having the same structure, and similar reference numbers indicate assemblies having similar structure or function throughout. The size and thickness of each assembly shown in the drawings are shown arbitrarily, and the present invention does not prescribe the size and thickness of each assembly. For clarity of the drawings, the thickness of some components in the drawings has been appropriately exaggerated.

[0032] (First embodiment) As shown in Figure 1, the present invention designs an automatic electrostatic flocking process applied to the spring surface. Except for loading and unloading, which require manual operation, all parts of the entire process are performed automatically. The specific processing steps are as follows:

[0033] S1:Loading: The hook is used to fix the spring above the conveying chain, which then enters the production line. During the spring's advance into the production line, the spring itself rotates around its own axis, ensuring that the adhesive and fibers can be evenly planted on the spring surface during implantation.

[0034] S2: Electrostatic adhesive spray application: As shown in Figure 5, the spring enters the automatic production line together with the conveyor chain. When entering the adhesive spray application procedure, the photoelectric sensor switch controls the adhesive spray application operation, and when the sensor switch detects the spring, the electrostatic adhesive spray application device starts to operate. During the adhesive spray application, the adhesive is sprayed by the nozzle and negatively charged. The spring is grounded or connected to zero potential. The adhesive is uniformly adsorbed on the spring surface by electrostatic adsorption. The thickness of the adhesive is controlled by adjusting the adhesive flow rate, the thickness of the adhesive is 0.05mm~0.2mm, and the adhesive used for adhesive spray application has a viscosity of 2500Cst~3500Cst.

[0035] S3: Electrostatic flocking: As shown in Figure 5, the spring after spray application of adhesive enters the electrostatic flocking chamber for flocking. The electrostatic flocking chamber is composed of a high-voltage electric field with a negative voltage at the bottom and a positive voltage at the top, and under the action of the high-voltage electrostatic field, the fibers move in the direction of the magnetic flux lines and are continuously charged and discharged. The utilization rate of fiber adsorption is high in high-frequency alternating current. The density of the fibers is controlled by the speed of the conveyor belt, and as shown in Figure 4, the spring is grounded or connected to zero potential, and when the fibers 4 contact the spring surface 6 during the movement, the fibers 4 become perpendicular to the spring surface 6 in the orthogonal direction and are inserted into the adhesive 5 under the action of electrostatic attraction. As shown in Figure 3, the fibers are continuously charged and discharged in the electrostatic field, which causes the fibers to move continuously in the direction of the magnetic flux lines in the electrostatic field. The fibers are 3.3 dtex and 0.5 mm to 1.0 mm. The high-voltage electric field has a voltage of 80,000 volts.

[0036] S4: Hardening: After the hair implantation, the springs enter the drying line for drying. The drying temperature is 70°C to 200°C, and the drying time is 20 minutes to 1 hour. The drying device is equipped with an infrared heater or an electric heater, and a temperature adjustment device.

[0037] S5: Removal of excess fibers: The spring passes through a brush and the surface of the spring is blown with compressed air to remove excess fibers from the surface of the spring. The fibers blown off the spring are collected by a fiber collector.

[0038] S6:Unloading: After the hair implantation process, the springs are removed and placed in a package.

[0039] Second embodiment As shown in Figure 2, the present invention designs a partially flocked spring. The spring is compressed by a special tool, and then placed together with the tool directly into the automatic flocking machine. The specific implementation is as follows:

[0040] (1) The spring body 1 is placed inside a metal rod with one end fixed, and the spring is compressed with a compression device. After that, a metal plug pin is inserted into the other end of the metal rod to fix the spring.

[0041] (2) The compressed spring, together with the metal rod, is connected to a conveying device for surface implantation. The other steps are the same as above.

[0042] (3) The spring is lowered and returned to the compression device for compression, and then the plug pin is removed to release the spring.

[0043] (Third embodiment) In order to improve the anti-rust performance after flocking, the adhesive is customized by the imported adhesive supplier. The imported adhesive is suitable for existing electroplating coating surfaces, but can also be applied to zinc-aluminum coating surfaces. The adhesive's adhesion to zinc-aluminum coating surfaces is made to meet customer requirements. After flocking, the spring substrate is not exposed even after 40,000 wear resistance tests under 1.5 kg pressure.

[0044] (Fourth embodiment) The present invention designs a semi-automatic electrostatic flocking process applied to the surface of the spring, as shown in Figure 5, to realize the rapid production of a large variety of products in small quantities. The specific steps are as follows:

[0045] S1:Loading: The hook 3 is used to fasten the spring body 1 to a reversible material tray 2. The material tray is rotatable by 180 degrees and is provided with a hook seat which can be connected to allow the spring to be easily hooked.

[0046] S2: Electrostatic adhesive spray application: The reversible material tray is placed on the bracket 7, and the adhesive is sprayed evenly onto the spring surface 6 by a manual spray gun. During the adhesive spray application, the adhesive 5 is sprayed by a nozzle and negatively charged. The spring body 1 is grounded or connected to zero potential. The adhesive is uniformly adsorbed onto the spring surface by electrostatic adsorption 6. The thickness of the adhesive is controlled by adjusting the flow rate of the adhesive 5, and the thickness of the adhesive is 0.05mm~0.2mm, and the adhesive used for adhesive spray application has a viscosity of 2500Cst~3500Cst.

[0047] S3: Rotate the material tray 180 degrees and spray adhesive 5 evenly onto the surface of the other half of the spring according to S2.

[0048] S4: Electrostatic flocking: After spray application of the spring adhesive, the whole material bracket is placed in the flocking box for flocking. The fibers are flocked in the adhesive 5 by electrostatic attraction.

[0049] S5: Hardening: The springs after flocking are placed in a drying oven together with the reversible material tray 3 for drying. The drying temperature is 70 to 200°C, and the drying time is 20 minutes to 1 hour. The drying device is equipped with an infrared heater or an electric heater and a temperature control device.

[0050] S6: Removal of excess fibers: The spring passes through a brush and the surface of the spring is blown with compressed air to remove excess fibers from the surface of the spring. The fibers blown off the spring are collected by a fiber collector.

[0051] S7:Unloading: After the hair implantation process, the springs are removed and placed in a package.

[0052] The conventional electric tailgate spring is made of round steel wire, which requires more installation space, and many electric tailgate systems with limited space cannot use flocked springs to reduce noise. In order to improve the conventional electric tailgate spring, the present invention designs a flocked spring solution that can be installed in a small space compared to the current flocked spring, and can reduce the shear stress of the spring and extend the fatigue life under the same installation space condition. The main technical solutions of the present invention are as follows:

[0053] (1) The flocked spring of the present invention includes a metal spring body, an electrochemical coating or zinc-aluminum coating, and a flocked layer on the outer surface of the spring. The spring body determines the mechanical properties and fatigue life of the spring in the system, the coating determines the corrosion resistance of the spring, and the flocked layer on the spring surface separates the direct friction between the metal spring body and the outer tube of the spring by flocking the fibers, thereby eliminating the friction noise caused by the friction between the spring body and the outer tube. The electrochemical coating or zinc-aluminum coating has a thickness of 15 μm to 20 μm.

[0054] (2) The flocked spring of the present invention breaks away from the conventional idea that electric tailgate springs are made of circular steel wire and uses elliptical wire. When the spring is fully compressed, the compressed height is significantly reduced. This allows springs that could not be installed in a system to be installed in existing spaces, and allows flocking and noise reduction to be achieved without changing the system structure.

[0055] (3) The hair-implanted spring of the present invention breaks the conventional idea that electric tailgate springs are made of round steel wires, and uses elliptical steel wires. Even under the same installation space conditions, the diameter of the spring's steel wire can be increased and the shear stress of the spring can be reduced, thereby extending the fatigue life of the spring.

[0056] (4) The solution of the present invention is as follows. According to the boundary conditions of the system defined by the customer, the spring is designed using a conventional round steel wire. Then, the round steel wire with a diameter is converted into an elliptical steel wire with the same cross-sectional area by cross-sectional area conversion. This results in a spring solution with a significantly reduced compressed height of the spring (this state corresponds to a state where the gap between the steel wires is zero). As a result, the noise problem of the electric tailgate system, which originally could not be reduced by using flocking due to the small longitudinal space, is solved without changing any parameters. The spring may be made of an elliptical wire.

[0057] The above is a detailed description of the specific and preferred embodiments of the present invention. It should be understood that those skilled in the art can make modifications and variations according to the concept of the present invention without any inventive efforts. Therefore, any technical solutions that those skilled in the art can obtain based on the prior art and according to the concept of the present invention through logical analysis, reasoning, or limited trials should be included in the protection scope of the claims. [Explanation of symbols]

[0058] 1 Spring body 2. Hook 3 Reversible material trays 4. Fiber 5. Glue 6 Spring surface 7 Bracket

Claims

1. A method for implanting hair on a spring surface, comprising the steps of: connecting the spring to the conveying means such that the spring moves with the conveying means, the spring being rotatably connected to the conveying means such that the spring rotates about its own axis; When the spring enters a step of spraying an adhesive with the movement of the conveying means, the adhesive is sprayed and charged, and the adhesive is attached to the surface of the spring by electrostatic adsorption; The spring after spraying the adhesive is put into a hair-implanting process, inserting fibers into the adhesive attached to the surface of the spring under the action of an electric field; Drying the spring after the hair transplantation; The method for implanting hair on a surface of a spring includes at least the steps of:

2. 2. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 1, wherein the conveying means is a conveying chain, and the spring is fixed to the conveying chain by using a hook.

3. 2. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 1, wherein in the step of spraying the adhesive, the adhesive is negatively charged, and the spring is grounded or connected to zero potential.

4. 4. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 3, wherein the adhesive is automatically applied to the spring surface.

5. 5. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface as described in claim 4, wherein, in the adhesive spray application step, when a sensor means detects the spring, an electrostatic adhesive spray application device sprays the adhesive and negatively charges the adhesive.

6. 6. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 5, wherein a thickness of the adhesive applied to the spring surface is controlled by adjusting a flow rate of the adhesive.

7. 2. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 1, characterized in that the implantation process is carried out in an electrostatic implantation chamber constituted by the electric field, and the fibers move along the magnetic flux lines to the spring surface, become perpendicular to the spring surface in the vertical direction, and are inserted into the adhesive under the action of the electric field.

8. 8. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 7, wherein the electrostatic implantation chamber has a lower portion at a negative voltage and an upper portion at a positive voltage.

9. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 7, wherein the fibers have a fineness of 3.3 DTEX and a length of 0.5 mm to 1.0 mm.

10. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 1, further comprising the step of removing excess fibers on the spring surface after drying.

11. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 10, characterized in that the spring after drying is passed through a brush and the spring surface is blown with compressed air to remove the excess fibers on the spring surface.

12. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 11, further comprising the step of collecting the excess fibers blown off from the spring by a fiber collecting device.

13. 2. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 1, wherein the implantation is performed only on a part of the spring surface.

14. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 13, characterized in that before connecting the spring to the conveying means, the spring is compressed, the spring is kept in a compressed state, and then the compressed spring is connected to the conveying means.

15. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 14, characterized in that the spring is placed in a metal rod with one end fixed, the spring is compressed by a compression device, and then a metal plug pin is inserted into the other end of the metal rod to fix the spring and maintain the spring in the compressed state.

16. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface as claimed in claim 15, characterized in that the compressed spring after implanting is lowered and returned to the compression device for compression, and then the metal plug pin is removed to release the spring.

17. The spring surface is coated with an electrochemical coating or a zinc-aluminum coating.

2. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface according to claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

18. 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the spring is made of round wire, elliptical wire, or oval wire.

19. The method for implanting hair on a spring surface as claimed in claim 1, further comprising an electric dust collection step before the adhesive spray coating step.

Images