Q2 has officially ended and with that comes some of the hottest paint booth trends of 2023. While we’re only halfway through the year, we’re excited to look at what’s happening in the finishing industry right now.
More and more shops are getting involved in servicing larger vehicles in-house, including sprinter vans and oversized trucks. Previously, many auto shops needed to send bigger vehicles to a shop that specializes in RVs. This caused several problems, such as being stuck to that shop’s prices and timelines. By bringing this work in-house, auto shops can turnaround jobs quicker and set their own costs. They can also broaden their customer pool by being able to service all types of larger vehicles for both individual and commercial uses. For example, SUVs, auto-homes, RVs, sprinter vans, and delivery trucks.
As of January 2021, over 80% of new car sales were from trucks and SUVs, not sedans. If an automotive shop isn’t already taking advantage of this new market, it’s not too late. Paint booth manufacturers are adjusting to this change by producing booths with larger cabin heights to accommodate these taller vehicles. In fact, Accudraft debuted the Italia Alto a few years ago, which has 3 more feet in height compared to a traditional booth.
Advanced technology has been a hot topic within the finishing industry for the last year now. Manufacturers are looking for ways to incorporate cloud and data technology to advance their products and help customers. Shop owners are also looking to better understand what the actual costs are for running their production, including finishing equipment. Last year, Accudraft introduced Live, a cloud-based software designed for monitoring finishing systems. The Live software tracks performance, costs, and times by paint booth, job, or painter. This allows operators to be aware of what is actually happening during production, write better job estimates, understand what is saving or costing money, and make smarter business decisions.
Typically, a booth can be configured to specific airflow directions, meaning where the air enters and exits the cabin. While there are some cases where side-draft or semi-down can be beneficial, most of the time downdraft is the way to go. In fact, demand for downdraft paint booths is expected to grow 3.5% over the next 10 years. According to the market research, this demand is caused for three key reasons:
At Accudraft, our flagship Titan downdraft paint booth continues to be our most popular model. It uses a 15 H.P. 1.5 million BTU direct fire heating system with 20,000 CFM to deliver airflow and heat specifications recommended by waterborne paint manufacturers.
Industrial paint booths are a growing niche within the finishing industry. Many end-use industries for material processing are discovering they can use paint booths for their production needs, even if they’re not exactly for painting. Some sector examples include jewelry, window, elevator, and construction manufacturing. Remember, at its basic level, a paint booth extracts fumes, which can be extremely useful when working with any type of liquid coating.
It’s no secret that during the global pandemic, manufacturing took a huge hit. Due to safety and health precautions, manufacturing and distribution all but slowed down to a halt, resulting in a worldwide delay across many industries. Manufacturing and sale costs rose as delivery times lengthened, creating a lose-lose situation between customers and companies. In a near post-Covid world, the manufacturing and distribution industry is finally starting to see some normalcy within production.
Unfortunately, the finishing industry was not immune to these effects, and while industry demand has grown throughout the last few years, supply hasn’t always been able to keep up. At Accudraft, we strive to manufacturer, deliver, and install our paint booths in a timely manner. One way we’ve been able to quicken delivery and install times is by opening a manufacturing facility right here in the United States. This allows our team to manufacturer many booth styles domestically and ship them out as quickly as possible. We offer many ready-to-ship stock paint booth models on our website at any given time.
As we move into the latter half of the year, Accudraft is excited to watch the continuous growth of our industry. Last year we debuted our Live software and have been showcasing it at various trade show events since then, including SEMA. We are also looking to be ahead of the industry and anticipate our customers’ needs beforehand. To stay up to date with all things Accudraft, check out our blog or subscribe to our monthly newsletter.
