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CASE STUDY
A manufacturer of gourmet baked snacks was losing time and money to a homemade oil spray system — two hours of maintenance every day, visible quality variation in every run, and oil waste built into every unit produced. Spraymation engineered a fully automated sunflower oil coating system to the manufacturer’s exact conveyor dimensions, line speed, and coating weight. The result: 100% coating uniformity, daily maintenance eliminated entirely, and more than $3,000 in monthly savings — with the system paying for itself in under three months.
Results at a glance
Monthly cost savings
Coating uniformity
Payback period
Maintenance eliminated
Project Overview
Industry
Gourmet Baked Snacks & Food Processing
Application
Pre-Bake Oil Coating
Product
Potato Crisps
Coating
Sunflower Oil
A light, even coating of sunflower oil applied before baking directly controls how a potato crisp looks, tastes, and browns. Uniformity isn’t cosmetic — it’s the product.
The manufacturer was using an in-house spray system that injected air into the liquid line ahead of a hydraulic nozzle. The approach created persistent problems:
[01]
Air injection produced inconsistent atomization — heavy spots and dry spots across the conveyor width, visible variation within a single production run, and rising reject rates at quality inspection.
[02]
With no precision flow control, the system over-applied oil to compensate for poor distribution, adding raw material cost to every unit and cleanup burden to the line.
[03]
The homemade system demanded disassembly, cleaning, recalibration, and reassembly before each shift — consuming operator time and delaying production startup.
[04]
Batch-to-batch variation undermined the premium positioning of a gourmet product line, and the manufacturer couldn’t hold tight quality specifications.
Spraymation engineered a fully automated oil spray coating system designed to the manufacturer’s exact conveyor dimensions, line speed, and coating weight specifications.
External-mix air atomizing nozzles. Two precision nozzles engineered for low-flow oil applications replaced the erratic hydraulic nozzle, producing a fine, uniform mist with consistent droplet size across the full conveyor width. Integrated clean-out needles prevent orifice plugging during extended runs.
Programmable spray controller. A Spraymation controller regulates liquid pressure and atomizing air pressure independently, so operators adjust flow rate without changing spray angle or drop size — eliminating the trade-offs of pressure-only flow control.
Air-operated double diaphragm pump. An integrated AODD pump moves viscous sunflower oil from tote to nozzle at consistent pressure, regardless of tote level or oil temperature.
Stainless steel, food-grade construction. All wetted components are FDA/USDA compliant and designed for full washdown, meeting the manufacturer’s food safety and sanitation requirements.
Spraymation’s engineering team analyzed the conveyor geometry, line speed profile, and target coating weight, then characterized the sunflower oil’s atomization behavior at operating temperatures through fluid testing. The system was engineered, assembled, and factory acceptance tested at Spraymation’s Fort Lauderdale facility before shipment — so commissioning was completed within a single planned maintenance window.
The Results
Uniform coating consistency.
Even oil coverage across the full conveyor width, every run. Product appearance and taste consistency improved immediately, and inspection reject rates dropped.
Significant oil reduction.
Precision flow control eliminated the chronic over-application inflating raw material costs — a direct contributor to the monthly savings.
Two hours of daily maintenance eliminated.
The tear-down, cleaning, and recalibration cycle is gone. Operators now perform a brief visual check at shift start, freeing nearly 500 labor hours per year for production work.
$3,000+ in monthly savings.
Reduced oil waste, increased yield, and eliminated maintenance labor deliver more than $36,000 annualized.
Payback in under 3 months.
The full system cost was recovered in less than a quarter.
Get Started
If a homemade or catalog spray setup is costing you oil, labor, and consistency, Spraymation can engineer a food-grade system to your exact line — tested with your actual product before it ships.
Case Study CS-2026-TC-001 | © Spraymation Holdings Inc. 2026 | ISO 9001:2015 Certified