Greetings! My name is Adam. I work in the advertising industry as a brand developer. I also teach surfing lessons and spend a lot of time volunteering with an animal hospital. When I was on a gap year, I took a job in a pen factory. Through that experience, I learned a great deal about how pens were made, but I also learned a lot about industrial work and manufacturing in general. In this blog, I plan to write about all aspects of these topics, and I hope that this information is interesting and informative to you. Please, grab a tea and start looking around. If you like my blogs, share them. Thanks.
The benefits of powder coating over wet paint cannot be overstated. Powder coating has become a significant part of product finishing today. Powder coaters are turning to multiple colour layers to stay ahead of the competition. The process is, however, not as straightforward as many people would want you to believe. Notably, if you go about the process the wrong way, you will end up with a poor finish on your products. This post offers practical tips that you can apply if you want to achieve excellent results with multiple layer powder coating.
Use a Grounding Rod -- When powder coating, the first layer does not offer as much of a challenge to newbie powder coaters as subsequent layers do. If you foresee facing such a problem, then you need to use a grounding rod. The grounding rod will make the powder stick to the surface like glue, thereby guaranteeing even application. For best results, use a clamp on the spraying rack, then attach a copper grounding rod to it.
Fully Cure the Last Coat Only -- A significant problem that powder coaters experience when applying multiple layers of powder on a product is poor adhesion between coats. To address the issue, you should partially cure the first and subsequent coats then fully cure the last layer. For instance, if it usually takes 30 minutes to cure the first coat fully, you can reduce curing time to 15 minutes. Remove the product from the oven and allow it to cool. If you plan to do four coats, then you would treat the second and third coats the same way. Only the fourth coat would need to stay in the oven for the entire 30 minutes. Partial curing allows the top layer to adhere to the previous coat as required, thereby eliminating inter-coat adhesion problems. The result is a uniform powder coating regardless of the number of coats. You have to be careful not to touch the partially cured surface with your bare hands, since it will affect the next coat.
Use High KV Setting for First Coat -- When spraying a powder coat on the surface of a product, the kilovolts—the amount of energy the gun delivers—determine the level of powder attachment to the surface. For the first coat, therefore, you need to set the gun to provide higher kilovolts so that the powder can adhere adequately to the product. However, if you use the same settings for subsequent coats, it might lead to uneven coating. Lowering the kilovolts for subsequent layers, on the other hand, improves the chances of coat adherence to the product surface.
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