Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Powder Coating–Part 2

In the last post I covered the equipment and set-up for powder coating so I’ll jump right into the powder coating itself!
The gun is connected to electricity and to an air compressor.  First one has to push the electrical button, and while holding it down, pull the trigger on the powder coating gun.  The air compressor feeds the powder out of the gun in a soft cloud or “dry mist”.  Through the magic of electricity, the charged powder is electrostatically drawn to the charged metal parts.  As a result, the powder sticks to the part and the excess falls harmlessly to the ground.
The photo below shows my husband demonstrating proper powder coating technique by coating the lamp cover. The close-up shows the texture of the powder “stuck” to the lamp shade.
coating lamp shadedetail & texture

He then passed the gun to me to practice on a old scrap airplane hinge.coating practice piecepractice piece
It was surprisingly easy!  I had enough confidence after doing the practice part that I did the remaining parts on my own.  We then carefully hung the pieces in the pre-heated oven to cure. You have to be careful not to bump the parts or else you could shake the powder off the parts.
After only 20 minutes of curing or ‘baking’ the parts were done!  We pulled them from the oven and hung them out to cool down enough to handle.
a few minutes in the ovenParts cooling
Here are some close-ups of the shiny, freshly coated and cured parts!
terminal bracket completegear covers - powder coated
This photo shows the effectiveness of the plug and tape.  On the bevel gear cover, the top hole had the plug, and hence the threads are not coated.  The bottom hole was not plugged and is coated.  The bracket has some ‘overspray’ on the backside, but no coating on the part where the tape was well secured.
plug effect  Backside of bracket and tension indicator
Here are the rest of the parts – so pretty!
powder coated parts - 1powder coated gear covers
Another benefit of powder coating is that it is easy to add more powder to any parts that may not have been coated completely.  For example, the far interior of the lamp housing and the back of the tension indicator were not completely coated.  No problem!  All that had to be done was hang the parts up again, re-spray with powder, and cure.  Here are are the before and after photos:
more powder coat needed2nd powder coating
This was so much fun that I’m looking forward to striping and coating Ms. Rusty Smile

10 comments:

  1. It looks brand new! I wish I had this set up available to try it also :)

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  2. The equipment is fairly easy to get and set-up. You can get it from the Eastwood website or Harbor Freight. The hard decision is spending money on powder coating equipment or more sewing machines :)

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  3. Whoa! Truly, all of them looked brand new! Powder coating absolutely helps a lot when it comes to restoring the aesthetic value and usability of certain products. Also, you might as well try customized powder coating; it’s surely a lot of fun! =)

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  4. its looks branded new in powder coating there are diffrent types of coating are there they are two main categories of powder coatings thermoses and thermoplastics. The thermosetting variety incorporates a cross-linker into the formulation. When the powder is baked, it reacts with other chemical groups in the powder to polymerize, improving the performance properties. The thermoplastic variety does not undergo any additional actions during the baking process, but rather only flows out into the final coating. The most common polymers used are polyester, polyurethane, polyester-epoxy (known as hybrid), straight epoxy (fusion bonded epoxy) and acrylics. The polymer granules are mixed with hardener, pigments and other powder ingredients in a mixer The mixture is heated in an extruder The extruded mixture is rolled flat, cooled and broken into small chips The chips are milled and sieved to make a fine powder.

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  5. Good work…unique site and interesting too… keep it up…looking forward for more updates.
    Polyaspartic coatings

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  6. Nice and easy way to find powder coating machine distributors from any part of the world through our business services online.

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  8. Thank you sharing with us this knowledge. If you want to build powder coating equipment at a minimal cost, like a powder coating booth, gun, oven, and so on. Visit our website General Coat right now to place your order for powder coating equipments! It can be delivered anywhere in the world.

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