ABSTRACT

Mixing is a very important operation in any process industry. All operations involving liquid phase reactions, blending homogenization, emulsion preparation, dissolution, extraction, etc, need mixing in one form or the other. Mixing of powders, pastes, paints, jellies, and many other products is needed to be done in many industries for many applications; it can be done by the rigorous shaking and creating turbulence in the contents. The process is known as Agitation for which directionally reversible mixtures are utilized. This project is about such a special purposed  mixer, designed and developed for a paint manufacturing industry. 

In this project work, the design and fabrication of an electrically operated paint mixer using locally sourced materials was carried out by selection of the materials needed. Measurement, cutting, welding, grinding, machining and finishing of the paint mixer. The results was discussed in details and gives better agitating performance. An electrically operated paint mixer was developed, the machine consisted of a mixing drum with a capacity of 30 litres.  The mixer member (agitator) was used to mix the paint components by the use of an Electric motor. The machine was powered with a 2 Horsepower (1500 W) electric motor, which transmitted the rotary motion of 2000 revolution per minutes to the shaft, which was supported with two bearings.

This project elucidates the ability to tackle the problem of mixing paint locally by hand and by manually operated machines, which are not only primitive but both time and energy consuming, and as well serves as an innovation in the paint industry. The electrically operated paint mixer was able to produce paint quantities of 10 litres, 15 litres and 20 litres of emulsion paint for 10 minutes, 15 minutes and 20 minutes respectively, which shows that as an increase in the quantites of  paint to be produced results in an increase in the time taken to produce or mix the paint constituents homogenously.