22. Small to Mid-Volume Powder Coating Operations
Speakers: Nick Liberto, Powder Coating Consultants, Ken Kreeger, Nordson Corp., and Ed Besterfeldt, Coral Chemical Co.

Making equipment selections for a small to mid volume powder coating operations can be difficult and confusing, as the equipment features and designs can be diverse and numerous.  Successful powder coating operations “right-size” their equipment selections to meet defined production, flexibility, and quality goals to ensure their capital funds are spent wisely.  The attendee of this workshop will receive a complete overview of all the equipment options available to them and understand how capital costs and operational costs are affected by production, flexibility, and quality considerations.  Options for pretreatment, drying, powder application/recovery, curing, product hanging, and product conveyance will be discussed in detail.  In particular, special attention will be given to various pretreatment processes used to produce high coating weights and high performance salt spray results using spray wand equipment. Included will be a review of acid cleaning versus alkaline cleaning; iron phosphate, zinc phosphate, ambient treatment applications; organic versus non-organic final seal rinse applications; liquid and powder paint considerations; manual spray wand equipment and proper application methods.   Maximizing the return on investment and ensuring short paybacks are a must in these difficult economic times.