diy powder coating

[Fivetide]

I worked at a shelving company during Uni and they powder coated metal, I think that the paint is applied with a static charge to make it stick evenly to the metal .. not totally sure and that might be on an industrial scale.

[i2i]

you should be able to get prices around 50p (50 off) per part if you shop around.

[graffian]

I powder coat my own parts. It's cheaper than paint.
I bought an unused electrostatic magic gun on ebay, the bloke I bought it off
bought it when he was restoring a car, but never got round to trying it.
I got an oven from freecycle, I hadn't seen one for a few weeks so I ran a wanted add
and had half a dozen offers.

I have never used a pro setup so I have no idea what it's like. I find I can't get a
good finish, but others with the same gun do get a good finish. Orange peel is powder to thin, ripples are powder to thick, I get both of these, at different times. I am wondering if it's the fan oven, it's surprising the powder stays on in the wind the fan creates.
But the finish is shiny and durable. I don't know what doing a lot of parts would be like, I got something like 12 parts in the oven on the cycle with the brake plate. It's not always easy to get parts in and you might find you need more power to heat the parts reasonably quickly, it's probably a lot easier and quicker to get a coater to do them; For me, with just my own parts, it works great.

Here's a pic of a brake plate, it's almost 80 years old and really pitted, I coated it and it looked terrible, so I stripped it again and gave it two coats of zinc rich powder, then sanded it with 120 grit and a coat of black, looks much better in real life.

[dazza]

Thanks all
50p-£1 a part would be a bonus,will have to see what they say,
thanks for sharing your experiences graffian,thats what im worried about, on paper it looks/sounds easy enough but i dont want to throw good money and time at some diy kit thats limited and have to strip parts to re-do them.

[Fivetide]

I think they used halogen lamps or something sillier at the place I worked.