Those of you who do your own powder coating….

[tkent02]

Which color did you use? I noticed there were no less than 6 black options : vtwin, powder, wrinkle, mirror, satin, high gloss.

I only bought one from Eastwood, the Gloss Black. The matte black and the red I've been using are just the cheap Harbor Freight stuff.

The gloss black looks nice where the surface is perfect, it just shows any imperfections really well.

The Matte covers most things even on fairly poor surfaces. I experimented on some junk parts, not preparing the surface much, it actually did pretty good. The gloss not so much.

[tkent02]

The Gloss black sucks. Even on good clean smooth parts can't get a good finish, most of it looks like ****, and they all look different.



Back to matte and wrinkle finishes for me. Time to see if paint remover takes this stuff off so I can start over.

[GateKeeper]

so I wonder what is different on what the shops do, my rims were done, I stripped all the old paint, they sandblasted them and did a chemical clean as well, phosphate or something like that, and then powder coated them inside and out....




I was told it all comes down to the prep and nothing else....

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[tkent02]

Maybe, and some of these weren't prepped all that well, but others were. Some of the ones that were really clean and smooth looked like crap too.

[Mayhem63]

I will strongly disagree with what that shop told you Gatekeeper...Prep is very important, but there so many other factors involved.
Humidity, ambient temp, age of the powder, proper powder storage, equipment condition, metallurgy and so many more

Believe me I've experienced it all!

tkent02...without actually watching what you did ...I would almost have to say that the black pieces in that 1 pic got burned...not over cured , just too hot or to close to the element (if it was an electric stove) just guessing
I do see some out gassing which would be consistent with older metal.
but the cure for that is not simple ...it's a trial and error thing.

I've had to tell people that "there is now way I can coat that part"
It would just be too expensive for you to have me do it 5, 10 or however many times it would take before it finally stopped gassing out
(believe me I hated saying I couldn't do it)
In the short run it would be cheaper for them to get it painted and I'll powder what I can.

I also talked some of them into texture rather than smooth finish to hide the imperfections I could not fix


Here's a link to the shop I worked at...if you go into the gallery you'll see some of the stuff we did...(I'm the guy directly behind the race car frame in the middle of the pic) and on the far right sitting on the old flatbed truck (we coated pieces on that also)

http://www.suracopowdercoating.com/

[GateKeeper]

I will strongly disagree with what that shop told you Gatekeeper...Prep is very important, but there so many other factors involved.
Humidity, ambient temp, age of the powder, proper powder storage, equipment condition, metallurgy and so many more

Well I am sure if your going to use crap that is out of date or old or cheap, or it's **** pouring rain and you have the doors open, and your posder is contaminated, and so on.....I believe it will turn out like crap.....

but if all else is new and ready to go, as is with the OP, he don't have old stuff, heck he just got into this....so it's still new products, I can only assume it would come down to prep.....

not seeing his whole operation and his oven and such it's hard to really say for sure, I know the place that did my rims, the oven was big enough you could walk into it, does that help ? probably as I am sure nothing is anywhere near a heating element, then again the place does an entire car chasis and or a crap load of parts at once.

All I can say is I brought the rims to them sandblasted, I also used paint stripper to clean what I could, the rims were nothing but bare aluminum and he still said he needs to blast them and chemically clean them to ensure he does not have to do the powder coating twice.

I found one flaw on the rims, it seems a little less powder was on the one spot, but that is about it.....

as you say it can be dozen's of things to cause a failure.....

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[tkent02]

I also talked some of them into texture rather than smooth finish to hide the imperfections I could not fix

I need to do some of this, black wrinkle finish or something. Any powder you can reccommend that covers up imperfect parts well?

I did these little parts in a toaster oven, could have been too hot locally.

[Mayhem63]

This was always a good powder to use.
Might be able to find an equivalent

http://www.prismaticpowders.com/colors/PWB-6464/

[tkent02]

Ordering it now, but first is it a really dark black and not grayish or blueish black?

[Mayhem63]

It is a deep black
Heres a link to the wrinkle pages from prismatic

http://www.prismaticpowders.com/powder-coating-colors/?gclid=CKu5-OXAs70CFUNqOgodbzsAUQ

There are a lot of colors in texture now


Footnote: see my original reply for my shop link

[Mayhem63]

To help avoid with the gassing out of parts you could also set temp lower and leave it in for a longer amount of time...

Most powders have a chart that shows you at what temp and duration it will be cured.

Example:

400deg for 10 min
375 deg for 20 min
350 deg for 30 min

some of the whites we did had to be done at the lower temp for longer duration to ensure consistency in color with varying metal thickness

[tkent02]

To help avoid with the gassing out of parts you could also set temp lower and leave it in for a longer amount of time...

Most powders have a chart that shows you at what temp and duration it will be cured.

Example:

400deg for 10 min
375 deg for 20 min
350 deg for 30 min

some of the whites we did had to be done at the lower temp for longer duration to ensure consistency in color with varying metal thickness

Interesting, the Eastwood Gloss black just said 500 until the powder flows, then 400 for 20 minutes. The HF matte black stuff said 425 for 20 - 25 minutes. Did not know about this chart, maybe older for longer is the way to go. Will use the big oven too in case being to close to the heating element is the culprit.
Thanks for the ideas...

[Mayhem63]

Yea, it might have been the toaster oven...I only say this because I have had that experience when I first started back in the day...
to close to the element and it burned the crap out of the powder.

A small oven doesn't have the insulation that a bigger one does so the element comes on a lot more and you'd be surprised at the temps those get to.
Our oven (we designed and built) had a million btu burner on it,but with all the duct work and insulation had pretty even temps

[Cassius086]

I just tried powder coating for the first time myself. A friend has the Eastwood powder and gun set up.

I media blasted the parts (rear fuel tank mount and the side plate where the fuse block & R/R mount on my GS) as experimental pieces, since they aren't visible). It was my first time doing any sand/media blasting as well.

I will try to get proper photos up. I think they turned out pretty well. We used the Eastwood Gloss Black powder. I plan to do the stock triples, fork lowers and the battery box as well.

I do have one question: Will the powder coating affect electrical grounding points? Such as, if I decide to use the front battery box mount as a single point ground, for instance...

[GateKeeper]

mask off areas that you want to use as ground points, would be the best thing to do ...

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