Industrial & Marine Electrics

Powder Coating

The use of Powder Coating as a finish for IME manufactured items is due to the exceptional performance properties and appearance characteristics. Environmentally, Powder Coating is gaining popularity as an industrial finishing process due to the clean nature of the process.

IME offers a tough, chemically resistant finish available in virtually any colour and texture conforming to AS 3715-1989 Metal Finishing - Thermoset powder coatings for architectural applications.

The 7 stage process of IME over-head conveyor plant is as follows:

Chemically cleaned at 50 degrees C to remove dirt and greases leaving a clean surface for the paint to adhere to.

Rinsed with fresh water at 50 degrees C to remove the chemical reagents from the now clean surface.

Iron Phosphating at 50 degrees C to provide greater adhesion for the paint and improve corrosion resistance of the base metal.

A final rinse is done with fresh water to wash excess Iron Phosphate from the surface.
The product is then dried in a convection oven at 80 degrees C ready for the application of the powder paint.

Powder is applied using 2 sets of 2 automatic reciprocating powder application guns (one on each side of the product.). A manual gun is also used to touch up the hard to reach places to get an even powder film thickness.

Finally the product is passed through our curing convection oven at 220 degrees C to cure the thermoset polyester paint. The even film thickness is ~50 microns or greater depending on the surface finish to optimise corrosion resistance and appearance of the surface finish.

At all stages of the process product is checked to ensure the IME product standards are not compromised.