I was thinking this after I dropped off a valve cover to be powder coated. Car companies are always looking at ways to make paint stronger and more environmentally friendly. Powder coat is durable, and there is almost no environmental impact. But what's stopping them from powder coating entire body panels? Would baking the panels add too much time overhead? Or is it just that much more costly to do over paint?
Quote, originally posted by muffintop »
I wonder what kind of G's a car like that would pull if it was actually free falling off a cliff.
They do powder coat them. The paint in the factory is like a powder and the body panels are electrically charged so the particles are attracted to them. Then they are baked on. It's just not as rough of a powder coat to make it more attractive.
Doug Wilson
"It would take a cross-wired star trek replicator, if not an act of God, to make a left-hand-drive Skyline GT-R for the U.S." - Don Schroeder
It's not cheap, and you don't get the same finish quality with power coat as with normal paint.
I worked at a place that made components for heavy truck, and we had a massive powder coat line. The parts were fed into it on a moving chain that went through a cleaning booth, drying booth, spray booth, and then a long oven.
We used to put all kinds of **** through that thing. It wasn't uncommon at all to look up and see a fender of an old Chevy moving around the line with all the normal stuff. I've used it for lots of suspension parts.
On the bigger stuff though, the finish quality really starts to show. Those fenders would probably last forever, but they didn't look all that great.
Another disadvantage is weight. Powder coating is a much heavier finish.
yes, it is VERY durable, especially compared to paint.
couple reasons why it is not used - finish is sub-par - heavy - difficult to correct (chips etc)
Its no more time consuming then other paint, it only takes 15mins or so in and oven to cure. And its not incredibly high, 350f or so
It's costly and time consuming from a production point of view. Imagine an oven large enough to bring an entire car body and all its parts up to 350 degrees, and be capable of spitting one out every 60 seconds (meaning it would have to have at least 16 or 17 inside at any given time. That's a massive heat load to have to pay for.
I remember watching a show not to long ago that featured the BMW 6 series, from inception to completion, that showed the clear coat as being baked on. The clear was applied as a powder.
It may have looked like powder but was a water based liquid paint and yes they do bake the final finishes but no where near the temp to make powder coat flow into a single surface.
Current Cars 04 Sienna (new) 00 Golf GLS (new) 91 Passat GL (new) 85 Bertone X1/9 70 Fiat 124 Sport Coupe 69 Fiat 850 Sports Coupe
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I think they don't do it on cars for many reasons:
1. Most powder is designed for metal and cures when the SURFACE reaches 400 degrees F for at least ten minutes. You have to get special powders that cure at lower temperature for application to plastic. These probably aren't as durable as the 400+ degree cure powders designed for metal nor may they match the finish exactly. 2. Heating up a whole car to 400 degrees surface temperature takes a hell of a lot of time and electricity, making the process inefficient and costly. 3. Hard to repair, you have to bake whatever part you want to repaint. 4. Surface isn't as consistent as multistage liquid paint i.e. can't get it as perfect or shiny. Like this is a two stage candy:
Asside from everything posted in this thread, I feel the need to point out:
Quote, originally posted by justanotherusername »
It's costly and time consuming from a production point of view. Imagine an oven large enough to bring an entire car body and all its parts up to 350 degrees, and be capable of spitting one out every 60 seconds (meaning it would have to have at least 16 or 17 inside at any given time. That's a massive heat load to have to pay for.
We use the same powder on plastics that we use on steel and aluminum and generally have very good results. We coat ABS and Nylon everyday. Our factory ovens run at @357°.
We do use some special plastics for some parts and a specific supplier for powder coating those parts.
Overall powder is a great material, it is impossible to touch up properly, has a orange peely surface in general (though some color formulations flow out better than others), is very durable but will not provide a class A surface one would expect on a car exterior.
Modified by kmead at 10:15 PM 11-3-2009
Current Cars 04 Sienna (new) 00 Golf GLS (new) 91 Passat GL (new) 85 Bertone X1/9 70 Fiat 124 Sport Coupe 69 Fiat 850 Sports Coupe
Past VWs 84 Jetta GLi (used) 86 Golf (new)82 Scirocco (new)73 SB (used)
I used to powdercoat, cool hobby: 1. Most powder is designed for metal and cures when the SURFACE reaches 400 degrees F for at least ten minutes. You have to get special powders that cure at lower temperature for application to plastic. These probably aren't as durable as the 400+ degree cure powders designed for metal nor may they match the finish exactly. 2. Heating up a whole car to 400 degrees surface temperature takes a hell of a lot of time and electricity, making the process inefficient and costly. 3. Hard to repair, you have to bake whatever part you want to repaint. 4. Surface isn't as consistent as multistage liquid paint i.e. can't get it as perfect or shiny. Like this is a two stage candy:
I heard from the guy that prepped my aluminum wheels that powder coating doesn't hold up to the uv rays? He sandblasts and paints railing for like universities and hospitals and said if you see powder coated railing it might look good but as soon as it gets weathered for a year or so it looks like crap cause of the sun.
Any truth in this?
Quote, originally posted by Rukh »
Does anybody actually save pics of old Caprices while thinking, "Yeah that's the ticket right there - Caprices are hot."
I use a large powder coater in NJ for my companie's products, architectural aluminum panels. They are a new supplier to us and so they just visited us and gave a full presentation of their company and powder coating in general. They serve the automotive industry widely and this question came up. Surprisingly, powder has come very far and numerous European manufacturers are using powder clear coats, Mercedes being one of them. Not on all vehicles, but they have started. Powder has been very popular in Europe for several decades. The reduced environmental impact is the driving factor.
It's costly and time consuming from a production point of view. Imagine an oven large enough to bring an entire car body and all its parts up to 350 degrees, and be capable of spitting one out every 60 seconds (meaning it would have to have at least 16 or 17 inside at any given time. That's a massive heat load to have to pay for.
WTF are you going to argue? That it's not going to be expensive to bring 17 or 18 car bodies up to 400 ****ing degrees and maintain it for 24 hours every day of the week?
Modified by justanotherusername at 6:00 AM 11-4-2009
I heard from the guy that prepped my aluminum wheels that powder coating doesn't hold up to the uv rays? He sandblasts and paints railing for like universities and hospitals and said if you see powder coated railing it might look good but as soon as it gets weathered for a year or so it looks like crap cause of the sun.
Any truth in this?
UV tends to kill the glossiness of powder, however there are different kinds of powder. Some are completely unusable outside due to UV instability whereas some are formulated to maintain their gloss in the midst of sun exposure for years.
So yes, there is some truth in that, one would have to use extremely durable powder for those rails. If one cheaped out and use regular powder it probably wouldn't last.
Industrial manufacturers like to move away from processes that take a lot of time or resources to complete. Baking the powder coat takes time and heat which are both expensive. The future for auto industries are paints that are UV cured or Infared oven cured. Most likely UV though, its cheap to turn on a UV light, its not cheap to heat a metal body to 400 degrees.
By the way Powder is just paint with no solvent in it.
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