This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.
I guess I could get some of those tire valve LED lights and put them on so you could see it spinning!
) and the adjustable voltage. That feature would help with the angular parts on the Cruiser. That might be what I upgrade to if this one quits anytime soon.
They told us that a good way to powdercoat tough aluminum parts is to bring them to a higher temperature when cleaning them, that way when you coat them at the lower temperature, you shouldn't have any volatiles that will outgas at the lower temperature left. it's supposed to help a lot, but not cure the problem.Once you figure out the air pressure it covers very well. I don't pay too much attention to their suggestion of 8 PSI. It will vary from 3-12 depending on several things like pressure in the tank. I set it low enough to get a good cloud and NOT blow any powder off the part.
My biggest mistake was not keeping enough powder in the cup. There needs to be at least 1.5" in the cup at all times to get a good 'cloud'.
Black is a hard color to get a good even coat as it's hard to see how thick it is. I learned to have BRIGHT light on my powder coating stand.
Pre-bake ALL thick cast iron or aluminum parts for 30 minutes! Then wipe the part down after it has cooled with acetone until the rag shows NO BLACK marks! If you don't do this the part will out gas causing bubbles in the coat. The turn signal switch housing on mine turned out bad even though I baked it once, sandblasted it, baked it again then wiped it down with acetone. I found on the web where it mentioned that some aluminum parts just cannot be coated due to out gassing.
Another mistake I made was assuming that all powders have the same bake schedule. I over cooked a few parts (turns the color several shades darker) before I realized this. Make sure to follow the specs on the powder NOT the gun! Polyester powders take 10 minutes @400 degrees after flow out where epoxy may take 20 minutes after flow.
Uh lets see, parts with a lot of angles are hard to coat evenly. An example is the clutch/brake pedal assembly housing and the air filter housing. I disassembled them, de-rusted them, sand blasted them, then learned that it was almost impossible to get the powder into the deep crevices.I had to use some black epoxy paint to finish some parts up!
