PRETREATMENT FOR POWDER COATING

To achieve the best results with your powder coating process, your product needs to be clean—free of dust, debris, oil, rust, old paint or finish material. Anything left on your product prior to coating will affect the powder’s adhesion and durability. That’s where pretreatment comes in.

Pretreatment equipment is used before your product is ever powder coated and is designed to make sure that your product is as clean as possible before powder is applied. (For more information on pretreatment, start with our Pretreatment Primer.)

POWDER GUNS AND POWDER SPRAY BOOTHS

Powder coating application is almost always done with a special Powder Spray Gun. In order for powder coating to work effectively, the powder must be electrostatic ally charged. The only way to apply this charge is with a spray gun designed exclusively for powder coating. Compressed air moves powder through the gun from a hopper or directly from the box the powder is stored in. The compressed air blows powder out of the gun as a tightly formed cloud. As the powder leaves the gun, it receives an electrostatic charge. Once charged, the powder cloud envelopes the part and the powder sticks to the surface of the grounded part (which is one of the reasons why powder coating equipment is so easy for new operators to use).

PROFESSIONAL POWDER COATING SYSTEMS LAYOUTS

A Batch Powder Coating Line is usually a system where the parts are prepared, coated and cured in batches of multiple parts, with operators handling up to dozens or hundreds of parts at a time. The products are usually hung on metal rolling racks, which move with the parts throughout the coating process. (Remember: high-temperature or metal casters for your racks are very important!) With a batch line, parts are usually moved from stage to stage manually, and the term “batch coating system” is also commonly used to describe operations where large objects are coated individually after being moved by hand or with machinery.