Powder coating thickness: a spatial process in subjected to design variables
by
Avinash Dharmadhikari
Advance Study Center of Statistics, University of Pune, India
Coauthors: Sarat Das (Michigan State University, USA)

Metal sheets are powder coated to protect them from environmental effects, including rusting. While excess thickness of the coat tend to fall off, too thin coat does not protect the metal from environmental hazards. Hence thickness of the powder coating (TPC) is "nominal the better" quality characteristic.

During production, TCP depends upon several control and noise factors. Some of the important control factors are powder-mix, fluidization of powder voltage, number of guns, injection and vertex air pressures, speeds of conveyer belt and oscillator.

From statistical point of view TCP is a spatial process on the surface of the sheet, and a user can have measurements on this process at selected co-ordinates.

In this talk we report the method that we used to analyze the data that was collected by a planned fractional factorial experiment.

Date received: November 13, 2000