More people prefer custom painting to make their products look unique. Some make use of air brush to match the need for color and style for their fixtures. Others still use conventional paints which have desirable properties but are not friendly to the general environment. With custom powder coating, it allows you free flowing of dry powder for coating your equipment that needs a smooth and attractive finish. Compared with conventional liquid paint, powder coating doesn’t use solvents to keep the binder and filler parts in a liquid suspension form. It uses electrostatic and curing under heat to allow flowing and forming of the powder coat. It uses thermoset polymer to create a hard finish which is tougher than conventional paints. It is typically used on metal products which include appliances, aluminum extrusions, drum hardware, and automobile and bicycle parts.
Powder coatings don’t contain water or any liquid but it can produce a thicker paint quality than conventional liquid paints with very few volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are usually emitted by solvents used in conventional painting. Custom powder coating allows you to freely paint the desired part or the whole material without spilling liquid and it has the ability to dry faster than others. Over spray can be collected, recycled and reused which makes the coating system one of the most cost effective choices in the industry. It also addresses the requirements of consumers for higher quality smooth surfaces.
Custom powder coating system has three basic steps that include:
- Part preparation or pre-treatment of the surface to remove dust, dirt, rust, mill scale and other contaminants. The process of surface preparation includes abrasive blast cleaning or sandblasting, depending on the material that should be cleaned. Cast steel shot or steel grit can be used to clean and prepare the surface before coating.
- Powder application process is the method of applying the powder coating to metal objects by spraying the powder using an electrostatic gun or corona gun. This kind of gun imparts a positive electric charge to the powder, which is then sprayed towards the grounded object through mechanical or compressed air. It uses a nozzle in different sizes for various painting needs. Another type of gun is called the tribo gun which charges the powder into triboelectric friction which adheres to the grounded surface. The dry powder coating has its own cyclomix impact mixer which changes the properties of paint when being applied on the material.
- Curing process is also called crosslinking wherein the thermoset powder is exposed to an elevated temperature inside a curing oven and allows a certain time frame to ensure that the powder paint has adhered on the material. Ovens used in the curing process can either be convection ovens or infrared ovens because they provide the right temperature for the powder to cure.