Patent ID: 7384482

Claim:
A coating system for pre-coating a vehicle chassis, comprising: a coating station and a curing oven, the coating station being disposed upstream from said curing oven along a travel path, the coating station being configured to deliver a layer of coating material to the chassis thereon, the chassis having a plurality number of sites, each site being a determined to be source for accumulating excess coating to cause unwanted drips thereof during curing, said system further comprising a plurality of nozzles, each nozzle being disposed in a nozzle group including of one or more nozzles, each nozzle group being trained on at least one specific excess coating site, wherein where each nozzle group is configured arranged to deliver a flow of air sufficient to remove the excess coating from a corresponding excess coating site without disturbing the layer of coating material on the chassis where drips and/or excess coating have not occurred, the nozzle groups including a first nozzle group upstream from a second nozzle group, a plurality of valves, each controlling the flow of air to one or more nozzles, a controller configured to control said plurality of valves and to time the operation of each nozzle group, the first and second nozzle groups being both located within the curing oven, wherein the first nozzle group includes an upstream nozzle and a downstream nozzle and the second nozzle group includes an upstream nozzle and a downstream nozzle, wherein the first nozzle group is positioned at a common elevation to direct the flow of air at an upper excess coating site on the chassis, and wherein the second nozzle group is positioned at a common elevation to direct the flow of air at a lower excess coating site on the chassis.