From regulatory challenges to technology innovations, Products Finishing looks back at the finishing industry stories of 2024.
Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation (PEO) offers an innovative approach to high-performance coatings for light metal alloys, providing superior alternatives to traditional hard anodizing. The process transforms the surface of metals like Al, Mg and Ti into a robust oxide layer with customizable properties, tailored for demanding applications in aerospace, semiconductor, and industrial manufacturing. screen printing tunnel dryer
Engineers at Surgical Coatings in Colorado have been ingeniously developing their own equipment, automation, processes and software since this powder coater’s inception in 1995.
Electroplating requires adherence to process control and maintenance procedures — here are some common missteps to avoid.
A throwing power cell is described in detail, which can be used as a small jig and positioned in an electroplating tank. This Assaf Cell is particularly useful for simulating small recesses, typically through-holes found in printed circuit boards.
A joint test protocol was developed by a hex chrome-free consortium to best evaluate the most recent commercially available alternative conversion coatings. This article reveals the findings.
While new orders improved, materials prices continue to increase.
Basic and periodic preventive maintenance is essential for avoiding oven downtime.
By focusing on effluent treatment and efficient tin recovery, this Indian surface treatment plant meets stringent environmental standards and sustainable high-quality production.
Is a custom masking design worth the investment? John Gill of Caplugs outlines the considerations to keep in mind when choosing between an off-the-shelf masking solution or a custom-made one.
The collaboration between Hubbard-Hall and Pavco brings together cutting-edge chemistry and extensive expertise to tackle common challenges in metal finishing, particularly for zinc (Zn) and Zn alloy plating. By leveraging the combined focus on innovation and efficiency, the team delivers practical approaches that help applicators elevate their processes, reduce costs and improve overall performance. In this webinar, the presenters will explore the synergistic effects of passivates and topcoats, revealing how they provide enhanced corrosion protection for Zn and Zn alloy plating. Together, these advances enhance the quality and durability of finishes and ensure long-term competitiveness in the marketplace. Agenda: Elevated performance Common issues addressed Innovative processes
XRF measurement of the layers is also important to assure the right color and appearance of the finished goods. Join Fischer as it discusses how XRF measurements can be used for process control, quality control and incoming inspection of electroplated jewelry pieces. Agenda: The high precision of XRF Cost-reduction benefits Getting reliable results in seconds Measuring multiple layers of plating thickness Calibrating for optimal performance
Any one of these three facets will help you become a stronger powder coater, but this session will walk you through all of them and provide details that will be most valuable on a quest to develop an optimal powder operation. Agenda: The good: introduction to powder coatings The bad: common challenges The ugly: debunking myths Best practices for optimal operations Case studies
Our focus includes the use of membrane filtration systems – which can recover up to 98% of cleaning solutions – dramatically reducing the volume of concentrated waste requiring disposal. Additionally, we delve into strategies for maximizing cleaner longevity by precisely adjusting oil concentrations, leveraging the direct relationship between cleaner concentration and effective oil content management. By adopting these methods, businesses can achieve significant cost savings through reduced chemical consumption, lower waste disposal expenses and decreased energy usage – all while promoting environmental sustainability. Agenda: Membrane Filtration Systems: Learn how these systems protect industrial assets and recover a substantial percentage of cleaning solutions. Cost-Saving Strategies: Discover opportunities for savings through extended cleaner longevity and reduced chemical waste Technical Cleanliness Challenges: Understand the various challenges in achieving and maintaining technical cleanliness across processes. Establish a more sustainable and cost-efficient cleaning program that delivers superior results, reduces downtime and minimizes environmental impact
Dive into plating bath optimization. Learn about the importance of chemistry measurement, various analysis methods and real-time monitoring benefits through X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis with insightful case studies highlighting efficiency gains. Join Fisher Technology's Devarsh Shah and Melissa Agneta as they discuss how to improve plating efficiency by exploring essential chemistry techniques, including real-life examples. Discover why measuring plating bath chemistry matters, the different ways to analyze it and the benefits of monitoring it as it happens in real-time. With XRF analysis, you'll gain the knowledge and tools to improve your plating process, thus ensuring top-notch efficiency and quality in surface finishing. Agenda: Importance of measuring plating bath chemistry Methods for analyzing bath chemistry Benefits of monitoring bath chemistry in real-time Case studies
In this high-level overview of wastewater system maintenance and upgrades, Robin Deal and Brian Greene will review the critical components required for a fully-functional system and discuss their expected life span. Learn to navigate factors such as material degradation and technological advancements, examine the effects, and address issues of chemical usage on the equipment. This webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge needed to ensure your wastewater system remains in optimal condition, highlighting the importance of understanding both the hardware requirements and the chemical interactions that can influence system longevity and performance. By implementing proactive maintenance strategies and informed chemical management practices, you can enhance the reliability and efficiency of your wastewater infrastructure, ultimately contributing to environmental sustainability and public health protection. Agenda: Essential equipment for wastewater systems Life span considerations for wastewater systems Impact of chemical usage on wastewater equipment
This presentation introduces the Chemical Coaters Association International (CCAI), highlighting its mission, vision, and role as a premier resource for education, training, and networking in the industrial finishing industry. Attendees will learn about CCAI’s structure, membership benefits, educational programs, including training seminars and online courses, and partnerships with events like FABTECH. It will also highlight the membership levels, benefits tailored to both corporate and individual members, and initiatives like peer groups for custom coaters, Women in Finishing, student outreach, and valuable online resources for the finishing community. Date: Tuesday, January 14, 2025 Time: 4:30 PM Check-In / 5:00 PM Dinner & Presentation Location: Cornerstone Sports Pub & Eatery 24 S. Main St. Oconomowoc, WI 53066 Cost: $30 CCAI Members / $45 Non-Members Registration: The registration cut-off date is January 8, 2025.
Save the date for the 2025 Florida Finishers Corp's Mid-Winter Conference. Please Register on the Florida Finishers Corp's Website https://www.floridafinisherscorp.com/ * Hotel information and discount code is on the FFC website *
Chicago Midwest Chapter of NASF Annual Business Meeting Election of Year 2025 Board of Directors Presentation of: The Bertram A. Stone Memorial Award Location: Westwood Tavern 1385 N. Meacham Rd., Schaumburg, IL Includes: Food and Drink
WiM's first-ever Men as Allies Conference will serve as a thought-provoking platform for participants to discuss the crucial role of men as allies in the manufacturing industry. Experts in the field will present evidence-based arguments and real-world examples to demonstrate the advantages of diversity, equity, and inclusion in manufacturing. Attendees will learn and discuss strategies and best practices to actively support and champion women in the manufacturing industry, thereby contributing to the creation of lasting change within their organizations. This event is tailored for men in the manufacturing industry at the Director level and above, who are committed to fostering diversity and inclusion within their organizations. It’s particularly designed for those who are eager to grow as allies, actively supporting and championing women in manufacturing. Through participation, attendees will gain insights, tools, and strategies to become more effective advocates for a diverse and inclusive workplace. The Men as Allies Conference will offer an opportunity for participants to deepen their understanding of allyship, engage in vital conversations about gender equity and leave armed with actionable strategies to drive meaningful, inclusive change in their workplaces. Sessions include presentations on what allyship is and why it matters, the business case for gender equity, enhancing allyship through emotional intelligence, allyship in action, and creating an allyship action plan. The conference also will feature small, interactive breakout sessions and engaging expert panel discussions, all aimed at equipping attendees with concrete tools and ideas to elevate their role as allies in the workplace.
Each year Products Finishing partners with thousands of finishing operations in the U.S. to celebrate National Surface Finishing Day (NSFD) on the first Wednesday in March. NSFD is designed to celebrate and showcase the industry to trade schools, businesses, officials and media, as well as to celebrate employees and staff. The overarching goal of NSFD is to bring further awareness to the important roles plating and coating facilities play in their communities. Facilities are encouraged to host events and work with local media to build awareness about the contributions made by the surface finishing industry. For a helpful guide to reaching out to media outlets, download the NSFD toolkit here. How can you celebrate? Share your company’s story Hold an open house where the public can check out your facility –— either in person or virtual Offer student shop tours to local trade schools Invite local elected officials to visit and get to know your staff Celebrate your employees Share news about what you’re doing on social media and use the hashtag #NationalSurfaceFinishingDay or #NSFD
CCAI is offering a comprehensive Industrial Finishing Safety Seminar developed by industry experts well-versed in safety for finishing operations. This day-and-a-half seminar focuses on NFPA 33, the Standard for Spray Application Using Flammable or Combustible Materials and will deliver important and critical information on how to safely operate an industrial finishing line. Topics Covered: An introduction to safety Overview and definitions General requirements and electrostatic spray equipment Ventilation Storage handling and distribution Fire protection Operations, maintenance and training Drying and curing Liquid and powder coatings Authority Having Jurisdiction panel discussion Who Should Attend? Manufacturing, staff and environmental engineers (industrial health & safety) Lead painters Maintenance leads and personnel Finishing equipment designers System controls and project engineers Facility managers Finishing industry distributors Date: Tuesday, March 11 and Wednesday, March 12 Time: Tuesday - 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM and Wednesday 8:00 AM - Noon Location: Sames 45001 5 Mile Road Plymouth, MI 48170 Registration Fee: CCAI Members: $599 / Non-Members: $750 Registration Fee Includes: Classroom instruction; lunch on day one; a certificate of completion; and a printed copy of the NFPA 33 Standard for Spray Application Using Flammable or Combustible Materials. Registration: CLICK HERE to register. Space is limited.
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Features stories and news on the adaptations of top shops, good habits, beneficial practices and successes that make a finishing shop a "Top Shop."
Young professionals are a vital asset to the finishing industry, and it is important to acknowledge those who are making great strides in shaping the industry's future.
Products Finishing is proud to announce a new awards program that recognizes individuals in the industry that are making important contributions to forward the surface finishing industry.
Reactive Surfaces, an innovator in bio-based coatings, works on development of Carbon Capture Coatings, which harness the natural CO2-capturing capabilities of live algae.
This Cincinnati-based plating company has experienced a 33% improvement as a result of investing in a new electroless nickel line. It continues to tweak the control technology to create the most effective coating for its customers’ needs.
Experts from MacDermid Enthone Industrial Solutions share industry insights in an interview from the SUR/FIN 2024 finishing industry tradeshow.
In these uncertain times, it is refreshing to hear from and learn about young talent in the surface finishing industry who are striving to make a difference within their organizations and the industry as a whole.
By replacing its immersion parts washer with a vacuum degreasing system, this machine shop is much more efficient, saving the company money, man hours and the health of the operators.
Finding a more accurate paint proportioner for its application enabled this auto parts manufacturer to save significant costs and labor while increasing capacity.
10 Point Checklist to Improve Your Parts Cleaning Processes
A collection of four PF features that delve into the technologies, processes and people working to provide protection for the automobiles of today.
Survey and analysis, with Hubbard-Hall, of Products Finishing Top Shops benchmarking attitudes and practices concerning parts cleaning.
Understanding the different types of oven heat technology for surface finishing, including how they work, and their advantages and disadvantages, can help determine the best heating solution for an application.
These complex parts have been cured in a gas catalytic oven. Source (all photos): Trimac Industrial Systems
Applying heat to a substrate causes a physical reaction which can be different depending on the material at hand. Heat can shrink, soften, harden and dry/dehydrate. So, how does the type of heat technology affect these applications? Not only does the heating process need to be considered, but also the cost and speed of heating to choose the most efficient oven for a process and for the end user.
I spoke with Marty Sawyer, CEO of Trimac Industrial Systems, manufacturer of industrial ovens, to learn about convection, gas catalytic infrared and electric infrared oven technology, as well as some hybrid applications and pros and cons of each type.
Sawyer says that although it is difficult to determine which heat method is ideal for a certain application until she truly understands that customer’s application and what it is trying to achieve, there are some general rules she follows. “If their primary motive is to reduce their cost per piece, I typically try to push them toward catalytic,” she says. “If their primary motive is speed, I typically push them toward electric infrared. If their primary motive is to be able to do anything under the sun, I push them toward convection.”
Each heat technology has benefits and pitfalls that make each type suitable for different substrates, processes, part sizes and shapes, and needs of the end user.
Convection heat is the most common form of heating technology in thermal processing. Typically involving an open flame burner, air is heated inside of a
This gas-cat cure oven from Trimac is part of a full powder coating system installed in Canada to finish complex tubular weldments.
chamber and then forced over the part with fans and adjustable dampers to create ideal airflow. The burner in these ovens can be gas combustion or electric powered.
“Convection ovens are basically a box of hot air, so it is extraordinarily flexible,” Sawyer explains. “Don’t get me wrong. Some can be very sophisticated as far as how the air is controlled, what you do with the air, and how you turn over the air.”
For instance, Trimac uses individual damper controls inside its convection ovens to properly balance and maintain air temperature throughout the oven chamber. Top, bottom, rear or side-discharge, the airflow within the oven can be directed in a variety of ways based on the part, the necessary temperature and the process being performed.
A batch convection oven is most effective when bringing powder coating in-house, for a custom coating job shop, or a shop that needs small volume heating. With higher volumes of a variety of parts, a conveyorized convection oven can be a good option.
Convection airflow is also useful to balance oven temperature and aid in curing powder on parts with thick and thin areas. This can be done by adding the technology to any gas catalytic infrared oven using Trimac’s ThermalWrap design.
Gas catalytic infrared ovens are the most cost effective and energy efficient heating solutions, according to Trimac. These custom-designed ovens, commonly used to cure powder coatings on almost any substrate, can do the same work in a fraction of the space, fraction of the time and use a fraction of the utilities required of a traditional convection oven.
Gas catalytic infrared ovens do not rely on heated, moving air to increase the part temperature. For this reason, they are especially useful for uncured powder or powder coated parts because the technology reduces opportunities for cross-contamination and blowing off powder. However, these ovens are also used for drying, thermal forming, boosting to temperature, and to gel powder coatings as well as for more complex parts.
From data compiled in Trimac’s laboratory on its equipment, there was an 82% reduction in CO2 when processing sheet metal in a gas catalytic oven versus the convection oven. Similarly, there was a 67% CO2 reduction when complex, heavy weldment was processed in a gas-cat oven versus a convection oven.
This heat technology catalyzes natural gas, which is more efficient than convection technology. “Gas catalytic is typically 2x but can be 3x faster than convection,” she explains. “This also means its footprint is 2x to 3x smaller.” Not only does this technology reduce the required space necessary to do the job, enabling more space on the shop floor for other processes, but it also reduces carbon usage and emissions.
Sawyer explains that for paint and powder coating applications, convection ovens are often large enough that there is a high level of natural gas being consumed. However, with gas catalytic heat, it is faster, cleaner and cheaper.
Based on Trimac’s testing and data collection, Sawyer believes the savings could be more than 66% CO2 (carbon dioxide) reduction when implementing gas catalytic ovens. “Because you’re only using about a third of the natural gas, you’ll use two thirds less CO2, and you will emit two thirds less CO2, just by changing technologies,” she says.
“Convection is your basic Chevy. Natural gas is a race car, which has more gears and is harder to work with.” – Marty Sawyer, CEO at Trimac.
Not only do operating costs decrease dramatically when less gas is used, but Sawyer adds that gas catalytic can produce a cleaner, higher quality finished part as well.
Although gas catalytic offers many advantages, like any technology, there are some considerations to mention. According to Sawyer, these ovens are more difficult to operate because they require more process control and training than convection ovens.
“I always like car analogies,” she explains. “Convection is your basic Chevy. Gas catalytic is a race car, which has more gears but can be harder to work with. However, with so many gears, you get much more control.”
She adds that because more monitoring and more recipes are required for gas catalytic ovens, operators need to be trained more thoroughly than convection oven operators.
The greenest, least demanding for fossil fuels, and the fastest heat technology, is electric infrared. The ovens that use this heat method can be designed in various shapes and can be implemented for almost any process involving heat treatment, including annealing, laminating, sintering, curing adhesives, curing powder coatings and thermal forming.
The electric infrared elements can be shaped to match the profile of the part being processed and can be controlled by zones inside the oven. This heating method maximizes the amount of energy absorbed into the part.
Because electric infrared is more powerful than the other types of heat, it is also capable of heating faster than other methods.
If an end user’s objective is to reduce its carbon footprint, electric infrared can be a good solution, depending on the size of the operation.
“If you’re working with a smaller oven, you don’t care as much about the operating costs (of electric),” Sawyer explains. “But if you’re working with an oven more like the size of the building, you might need a substation around it to provide the thousands of amps that you might need to do all the work in electric.”
Because electric infrared is more powerful than the other types of heat, it is also capable of heating faster than other methods. It can sometimes heat 10x as fast as convection ovens, Sawyer says.
Trimac’s Pro-Cat oven combines the speed of electric and the curing ability of catalytic. This oven is especially useful when users are looking to save thousands of square feet of space, heat as fast as possible and reduce the carbon footprint.
But with power comes expense. Therefore, according to Sawyer, in general, electricity is significantly more expensive than gas catalytic, which is the least expensive heat technology.
However, when working with complex parts, electric infrared is limited. As the temperature gets higher with this technology, the wavelength gets shorter and becomes similar to rifle, as the “line of sight” issue becomes a challenge as Sawyer describes it. Because of its process speed, it only heats what is in its path.
Electric infrared ovens are most efficient for boosting large, complex metal parts. Flat parts are also more efficiently heated using this method. For applications using glass, wood, and other substrates, electric is the optimal choice because of speed and the high level of control.
To combine the benefits of more than one of these heating technologies into one oven, some end users are choosing to integrate electric infrared technology at the front of a convection oven to boost the power of, or “turbocharge,” the convection oven.
However, Trimac is offering an oven model that implements Protherm’s electric infrared elements and Trimac’s gas catalytic methods, called Pro-Cat. “This enables us to shrink the size of the catalytic oven and get the speed of electric infrared without some of the downsides of it, which is its power consumption and inflexibility,” Sawyer explains.
For companies that are heating complex parts, Pro-Cat can be the most successful way to reduce a carbon footprint and reduce process time.
Because there is no straightforward formula for deciding which type of oven is best for an application, becoming educated about the different heating methods is a good place to start. When Sawyer is working with customers, she suggests they record the utility cost of a particular oven, the cost to operate it as well as the throughput, work-in-process, and all production costs. With this information, it makes the process easier, but it’s still a matrix, she says.
“My answer to the question ‘what is the best technology?’ is always ‘it depends’,” she says. “It depends on some very basic things like the part’s size and shape that needs to be heated, the process and the substrate. And what are your business needs?”
Working closely with an experienced oven manufacturer and having your parts tested increases the chances of choosing an oven wisely.
In this Q&A, infrared curing’s ins and outs are covered by Carlisle Fluid Technologies, including how it works, why its a popular curing type and the benefits of it.
As a former motorcycle manufacturer, this powder coating Top Shop benefits from understanding the finishing industry from a customer’s perspective.
WolfRayet catalytic gel ovens offer small operational footprints while also providing a way to improve on existing convection curing.
Basic and periodic preventive maintenance is essential for avoiding oven downtime.
Learn about the advantages of gas catalytic infrared pre-gel ovens in this article, including how they are energy efficient and can save users time and money when integrated into their existing systems.
Curing as much as 75% quicker should make any applicator give infrared ovens consideration.
How will the advent of electric vehicles change paint curing processes and oven requirements?
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