“It’s all about the ease of operation of the GFS equipment”

Spraying 200 to 300 gallons of paint a month, with an operation that runs seven days a week, Samuel Pressure Vessel Group needed reliable equipment that was simple for multiple technicians to use. In 2022, Dave DuPont, finishing foreman at the company’s plant in Marinette, Wisconsin, helped select a Large Equipment Paint Booth, Blast Booth and Industrial Paint Mix Room from Global Finishing Solutions (GFS) — all with user-friendly controls, for technicians with differing styles and skillsets.

---

Please introduce your business and tell us your story.

“We make pressure vessels. The majority of the work we do is air storage. The vessels range from as small as 3 inches to 96 inches or 120 inches, and we can go considerably larger than that. Some of our small-tank designs, we build them every month, but we do have a lot of one-off stuff for smaller production runs. We serve a bunch of different industries, mostly air receivers.” 

How did you decide on GFS equipment? 

“We had a previous relationship with (GFS distributor) ICAFe. Some of our old blast booths and paint line were installed by ICAFe. They knew our facility, and it really came down to the services we were getting from the distributor. We were able to visit other manufacturers and see different options and talk to people who had GFS equipment. There were also incentives we could take advantage of, doing green initiatives with LED lighting, some energy savings that the equipment offered. We also liked the simplicity of the design of the equipment. It does what we want it to do and is easy to run.” 

What do you like most about your GFS equipment?

“It’s all about the ease of operation of the GFS equipment. You’re telling the booth, ‘If I cure, I want it at this temperature, and I want it to run this long, and this is what I want it to do when it’s done,’ either shut off or go back into spray mode. We spray some paint that dries exceptionally fast, and the warmer you can make the booth, the quicker it’s going to dry. Because it’s a short spray time, a few of our painters set the booth at 90 degrees, and they spray at that temperature.”

How has your GFS equipment benefited your business?

“We used to spray in an open face paint booth, with two filter banks on the outside of a wall. It was not sealed. There was no protection from contamination. Now, not only do we not have dust falling on our tanks, in an enclosed environment, we can choose how we want to spray that paint or we can heat up the booth if we need to. Or we can shut the heat off if we need a little bit longer to spray.” 

What is the plan for the future of your business? 

“We’re working on improvements to some of our other wet paint booths, and our big push is to put in a new powder coating line. We still outsource some of our powder coating. Our current line is limited by weight and size of the product. A new powder coating line would allow us to keep it all in-house and streamline our process. Some of the improvements that have happened with powder coating in the last 10 years, especially some of the zincs that weren’t available when we started, sometimes it makes sense to just spray powder.”