Process Performance and Benefits
Electrophoretic coating or Electrophoretic lacquer offers many advantages over electroplating, anodising, conventional paint and powder coating
It is:
- Environmentally friendly
- Low toxicity process,
- Requires relatively simple and low-cost application equipment
- Provides a long-life, wear-resistant surface finish
- Water-based process, which is stable and easy to control
- Uses low voltages and current
- Can create a wide variety of special effects and colours
- Allows high volume production from small sized plant saving factory space and energy consumption
The latest electrophoretic lacquer and coating processes – such as the one-coat Alphaclad range form the Hawking Electrotechnology Ltd – offers both high-build and low-build technology with high performance
Decorative corrosion resistant “one-coat” electrophoretic coating is a relatively recent development, which not only offers new finishes but also provides a simpler environmentally friendly substitute for many other finishing operations.
Companies who have never previously felt either capable of their own finishing or have had concerns about toxicity or environmental issues, are now using the process very successfully.
The process produces very flat, bright coatings with no runs, sags or windows in the cured film, along with excellent UV resistance.
Plant can be very simple, minimising capital expenditure, and takes up little production area. Tank sizes can vary from as little as 200 litres up to 20,000 litres.
Production rates through tanks are very fast (40 to 120 seconds is typical) and the process is easy to fully automate for high production rates.
Added to this, the process gives better adhesion than most other organic coating processes. Precise thickness control can be obtained together with excellent uniform coverage, giving very good penetration into recesses and blind holes. This, together with the coating’s, excellent corrosion resistance, provides more accurate and reliable prediction of corrosion life of coated components and adds to this an almost infinite range of possible colours.
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