Powder coating. In my shed.

[jakebullet]

I recently bought a powder coating gun, and thought you lovely people may be interested.

 

Here's the gun that looks a bit like it could be for artificial insemination of cows. (perhaps):

 

Make something to coat. Any threads are masked with er, masking tape to stop them getting clogged up:

 

Hang the item up in a cardboard box from a bit of mig wire. Attach earth lead to mig wire. Wear a good quality respirator:

 

Push foot pedal, pull trigger and coat it. Do not ignore the 'do not touch both gun and item at same time' instructions as it feels like holding a bad ht lead while someone revs to 5K:

 

Transfer to the oven:

 

Health and safety peeps please stop reading now..... This is my oven:

 

It's an ikea metal locker, half a sheet of 1mm steel, a knackered space heater, and half an hour with the plasma cutter putting it all together.

 

Heat to 190 C for 15 minutes:

 

Allow parts to cool down. Add a bit of 'scene tax magic' and voila! Something to flog on ebay to the vw boyz:

 

It uses about 50p worth of gas to cook six. I've not worked out how much the powder is costing yet, but not much I think.

[outlaw118]

Cool - nicely described!!

Nice to know we've got another trade "on the firm"!

[ashmicro]

Nifty! Well done.

[stuboy]

good work

[wackywacerwill]

Good stuff.

 

I need to get some wheels done, wonder if they would fit in my kitchen oven?

[CreepingJesus]

Great result, and I love the oven. I did all this stuff for Higher C+D at school - powder coat, stove enamelling etc., and the powder coat was always the one I couldn't master. Always seemed to end up lumpy or 'overcooked'.

Is the electric method by induction, then? Could quite fancy one of these for doing bike bits.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Sweet result.

 

Many years ago in a school science lesson we watched a video about powder coating. It featured two boys who wanted to repaint their bikes. One used spray cans and the other, predictably enough, powder coated his. This stuck with me because the tone of the video suggested that spray paint boy was some kind of mental deficient for choosing the inferior method. It really riled me up and I remember thinking "and what if he doesn't have a fucking bike sized oven?".