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Powder Coating Plastics

Our coatings application expertise has enabled us to work with customers to efficiently and successfully coat nylon reinforced plastic parts with decorative and protective color and clear powder coatings we call "Classic Kote".

 

Top 10 Reasons for Powder Coating Plastics

 

  • 1.  Tremendous selection of Colors
  • 2.  Wide variety of textures and finishes
  • 3.  Improved UV resistance using Polyester based materials
  • 4.  Better durability than uncoated plastic or wet  paint
  • 5.  Potential net cost savings vs. wet paint
  • 6.  Lower EOQ than molding in color
  • 7.  Lower environmental impact than wet paint
  • 8.  Reduced inventories of colored resins
  • 9.  Reduce costly, time consuming color changeovers in the molding process
  • 10. Improved color matching  
  •                                          

For a long list of reasons, molded plastics have become a viable replacement for many other substrates, particularly in more complex parts found in the Office Furniture, Appliance and Automotive industries.  The combination of strength and light weight of plastics make them an attractive alternative to traditional materials, and are typically less expensive than many lightweight metal alloys.

 

At the same time, Customers are demanding greater variety and differentiation in the products they buy, making it more difficult for manufacturers to attain economies of mass production.

 

One solution that addresses both these manufacturing challenges is the process of Powder Coating Plastic materials.  The powder of coating plastic materials provides the aesthetics and performance that Customers demand, while avoiding the expensive and inconvenient environmental issues associated with traditional wet paints.  While it is true that not all plastic materials lend themselves to the powder coating process, there are many compounds that work very well.  Nylon based materials, already popular for their light weight and structural strength, are particularly well suited to a powder coating process.  

 

Conductive Plastics

The basic concept of electrostatic powder coating is that a powder holding a small positive electric charge will be attracted to a grounded substrate.  This electric charge helps the powder to cling to the substrate, at least until the part being coated can be heated, or baked, in a curing oven to bond the powder to the part.  This is a very efficient and proven process for applying protective or decorative coatings to a wide variety of conductive materials.  Of course, most plastics are non-conductive, making the electrostatic powder coating of plastics more complicated.  This explains why relatively few Powder Coaters routinely process plastic parts.

 

It is only in the past few years that several companies have developed conductive plastic powders.  Basically, a variety of conductive fillers are added to the plastic resin to form compounds with conductive properties.  For more details on the development of conductive plastics, go to:

 

http://www.phschool.com/science/science_news/articles/plastic_electric.html

 

These new materials have fascinating applications in the electronics industry such as RFID tags and flexible LCD screens.  For more information on the applications for conductive plastics, go to:

 

http://www.appliancemagazine.com/editorial.php?article=500&zone=211&first=1

 

As it happens, these conductive properties also facilitate the powder coating process by attracting the positively charged powder coating materials to its surface in much the same way that a metal substrate would.

 

At their current stage of development, conductive plastics do have some limitations.  Generally speaking, conductive plastics are somewhat more expensive, and lack the mechanical strength of their more commonly available, non-conductive relatives. 

 

 

Due to the proprietary nature of our current applications we are unable to share specifics about them with you.  However, we welcome your inquiries and requests to work with you on your application requiring powder coated plastic.
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