Last night, Brian Parker gave a talk to our Society, on, and demonstration of, Powder Coating.

Following after the articles recently published in MEW, it was particularly appropriate.

He described the techniques needed to ensure a good result, He had brought along a selection of powders, showing the effects, and the demonstration included two different types of gun, and a small spray booth and an small oven, with nits control system.

It was pointed out that Industrial systems tended to use even higher voltages than those in "hobby" systems, (upto 25Kv ). And so, his preferred use of a hand control rather than a foot control.

The demonstration was backed up by a wide selection of images showing the principles of powder coating, and its advantages over spray painting. The images shown included Brian's sophisticated equipment, at home, for cleaning the workpiece, and the spray booth and oven used to produce the end result.

Having shown a variety of finishes, the demonstration ended with an empty baked bean tin being coated with a green powder, which was then cured in the oven.

To our surprise it was possible to coat non mettallic materials such as glass or even wood. Brian intends to exhibit at The Midlands Model Engineering Exhibition a loco, comprised of different materials, to illustrate this.

The only materials that are not suitable seem to be plastics and soft soldered items, because of the temperatures involved in curing the powder.

It was a very interesting and informative evening!

Howard