The modern manufacturing industry involves a lot of skilled labor and machines necessary to make a final product, from drilling holes in metal and wood to using laser cutter heads to sanding down rough surfaces. One of the later steps of making an item is the painting or coating process, and liquid powder coating is an excellent option for many finished goods today, such as aluminum goods or motorcycle or bicycle parts. Why get a powdered coating, and how can these liquid coatings offer advantages over regular paint jobs? Many manufacturers rely heavily on liquid powder coating jobs, and for good reason.
What Are Powder Coatings?
Today’s liquid powder coatings involve free-flowing, dry powder that is sprayed right onto the object in question. For any coating job in a factory or workshop, coating is applied for both the aesthetics and protection of an object; take a car’s paint job as an example. While traditional liquid paint is sprayed onto an object with an evaporating solvent, liquid powder coatings are applied electrostatically instead, and it is hardened with heat. Such powder may be thermoset or thermoplastic polymers, and this offers a number of advantages. For one thing, the end result is tougher than regular paint is, allowing it to better resist flaking or chipping or scratches in many cases. And since there is no liquid carrier, liquid powder coatings can be applied in thicker layers without any running or sagging.
Better yet, horizontal and vertical jobs hardly look any different when powder coating is applied, boosting the finished item’s aesthetics even further. It should also be noted that the liquid powder coating involves very low VOCs (volatile organic compound) emissions, since no solvents are used and no evaporation takes place. Thus, liquid powder coatings are environmentally friendly, and this makes them appealing all over the place. As a bonus, powder coatings cure much faster than painted coats do.
The Market for Coated Items
This is hardly an obscure coating method; in fact, powder coating is becoming quite popular, and it is taking up a larger and larger share of the manufacturing market. By now, powder coating represents just over 15% of the overall industrial finishing market, and from 2016 to 2021, estimates say that the coating industry will grow 3% per year in the United States. Worldwide, the liquid powder coating market is due to hit a value of $12.48 billion by the end of 2020.
What sort of industries are making the most use of this coating technology? A lot of demand for liquid powder coating comes from the auto industry. Currently, the auto coating market dominates liquid powder coating technology, and some estimates once stated that the powdering coating demand for furniture would increase 7.6% from 2014 to 2020. After all, many pieces of furniture made of metal, and furniture buyers want their furniture to be not only tough and useful, but also attractive. After all, furniture pieces typically double as aesthetic and decorative items, and using powder coating on metal surfaces can help. Lastly, the appliance industry is another major customer for powder coating. It accounts for about 33% of all industrial parts that receive powder coating.