The Environmentally Responsible Choice
Baby steps and Bigger – the easy steps to implementing powder on wood/MDF in your business.
Part of deciding to move to PureClad powder for wood and MDF is understanding the application and cure process, what’s involved, how to get the best performance and the biggest bang for your buck. Fortunately there are options for you to investigate on your way to choosing a stronger, safer, better finishing solution.
Whether you want to visit a powder coating line and see it in action, have someone else coat for you while you test the waters and your customer’s reactions, or are ready to jump in with a scalable line that grows with your business, there are options available.
Rodgers Wade employee hanging parts on the line
Visiting a coating line that’s already successfully coating wood and MDF with PureClad powder is a great way to gain confidence. Of course, these coaters are also available to coat parts for you - taking your fabricated pieces, coating them with powder, and shipping them back to you ready to go.
John Hamer from Rogers Wade in Texas explains, “when I looked into the market potential for powder coating beyond metal, and took the time to fully understand the incredible product developments the IFS PureClad team have achieved and the improvement in process that have led to an efficient coating operation, it was a no brainer. We are up and running and we’re coating wood and MDF with PureClad powder. Our latest job was for a national retail brand – it’s exciting stuff!”
Rogers Wade have a dedicated powder line that can take a wide variety of shapes and profiles and coat them quickly and efficiently in high quality, sustainable powder.
Hamer continues, “The actual coating operation is quick, and as soon as the finished parts are cool –a matter of minutes – they’re ready to go. We have the whole spectrum covered. We are able to apply powder primers that can have a powder or liquid topcoat on them, single coat powder applications for things like closets and shelving, and have also been involved in powder coating cabinet doors and other parts with the cabinet industry favorite, ‘Cabinet White’. We have an efficient set up and provide professional coating services to those who aren’t ready to invest in the equipment themselves.”
Wood part passes through Rodgers Wade coating line
Try before you buy has long been a favorite and makes sense. So what if you’re ready to put in a line – no matter what the size - now?
Answering a few questions helps the team figure out the best system and best use of your available floor space: What substrates will you coat? What are the dimensions of the largest pieces you want to coat? What are your goals in terms of throughput? How much floor space will you allocate for the line?
With your answers to these questions, IFS Coatings, together with allied suppliers, will formulate options from the most basic to the most automated and advanced systems for you to consider.
Once the equipment is in place, the first item on the agenda is what we call “dialing in” the line. With your operators at our side, dialing in begins with the application process. We load powder into the feed hopper, turn on the power and start the airflow for the first time.
From there, we hang a few parts and start the conveyor, confirm that the conveyor and parts are electrostatically grounded, and begin feeding powder through the guns. Dialing in the guns is focused on adjusting the powder volume, charge and air flow settings, as well as gun positioning to optimize coverage, film thickness and powder utilization. As the guns are being dialed in, we’ll fire up the pre-heat and cure ovens and take measurements to confirm the parts will see the specified energy through their journey in the ovens. All of these adjustments and settings, which are documented throughout the process, will form the foundation for operating protocols to ensure that the knowledge it will take for a successful start-up will carry on in your new finishing operation.
Once the ovens, guns and conveyor are all dialed in, it is time to hang parts and start the coating operation. The first thing you notice, in contrast to your previous operation, is that the parts are hung much closer than they could be with traditional liquid finishing. For example, boards that are a half inch thick can be racked as little as 4 inches apart. This high line density translates to efficiency and throughput – with powder, we can push a lot of parts though the line with a lot less space!
As the densely spaced parts exit the cure oven (around 7 minutes after they entered the pre-heat oven), the first thing you’ll notice will be the consistent, beautiful finishes. Next, as the parts cool down and are inspected and removed from the conveyor, it will sink in…from start to finish, your PureClad process is delivering finished parts at least 10 times faster than traditional liquid painting. That translates to efficiency, which in turn often means cost savings.
Factor in the sustainability advantages, the lack of solvents and VOCs to deal with, and all the performance improvements (chip and crack resistance, flexibility, resistance to yellowing to name but a few), it’s clear that taking this step is a step in the right direction.