1. Field of the Invention
The present invention refers to a method of controlling an electrostatic coating device, which sprays a coating medium such as powder or wet lacquer onto a workpiece, using an electrostatic coating system which is capable of operating according to this method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the conventional electrostatic powder coating facilities, a workpiece passes in the horizontal direction through a coating compartment with vertical slots being provided in the side walls of the coating compartment. Through these slots coating guns spray the coating medium onto the workpiece.
The workpieces to be coated may have different sizes and shapes, they may have small webs, large closed surfaces, hollow spaces, recesses etc. In order to optimize the efficiency when applying the coating medium, i.e. in order to spray as little coating powder or lacquer past the workpiece as possible and to ensure penetration into cavities, the shape of the cloud of the coating medium discharged by a coating gun may be varied. This is usually done by selecting a suitable nozzle, e.g. a slot nozzle, the use of a reflector body or the like. In the prior art, the nozzles are exchanged manually. For exchanging the nozzles, operation of the coating system must be interrupted. This of course requires a lot of time and personnel.