Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Advantages Of Electrocoating For The Automotive Industry Today

Advantages Of Electrocoating For The Automotive Industry Today

By Essie Craft


Electrocoating is an advanced form of coating that is gaining in huge popularity today more than ever before. Also known as e-coating or electrodeposition, it is a coating process where metallic workpieces are soaked in a paint or water bath. As the name may suggest, the process uses electricity to ensure the perfect layer of paint that inhibits corrosion is created. Dating back to 1930, electrodeposition has grown in bits and bounds to be the most popular form of coating today and for a very good reason.

While gaining in huge popularity today more than ever before, this is not a very new process considering electrodeposition started way back in 1930. Technological advancements have, however, seen the process improve and today it has become the most efficient, automatic, controllable, and affordable way of applying the much needed coating in between phosphate and the primer layers to protect it from corrosion.

Affordability is one of the reasons why more and more people are going the electrodeposition way. Of course there will be an initial capital investment to get you started, but once that is sorted, the operating expenses in an organization can significantly reduce, especially when compared to traditional methods of metallic workpiece coating, such as spraying.

Efficiency is the second reason that most service providers today are leaning towards electrocoating. This is the only tried and tested coating process that has the highest material transfer efficiency. Thanks to technological advancements, a company can take advantage of certain techniques such as the closed-loop ultrafiller rinsing. This is a method that guarantees a 100% material recovery and utilization.

Still on the efficiency issue, e-coating is an efficient form of coating even in hard-to-reach surfaces. Many people have had a problem spray painting closed interior box pieces of automobile pieces. This is, however, set to change with electro -coating because it is automatic and can reach any hidden parts easily and more directly. Spray painting such hidden parts often requires specialized spray equipment which requires a very extensive manual coat application process. More often than not, the results will always vary especially on coat thickness.

For those who are concerned about the environment and saving Mother Nature, no doubt electrodeposition is the way to go. There are so many industrial companies whose processes emit harmful solvent emissions that end up polluting and depleting the environment off its valuable resources.

E-coating is quite environmentally safe because of the fact that it is a water-based coating with a mere 3% of a reactive organic solvent. It is no wonder all automotive assembly plants that use this form of coating have the safest surroundings compared to those using traditional coating solutions.

Last but not least, e-coating is controllable. Once the basics of e-coating are mastered i. E. The bath chemistry to be used, plant and environment maintenance, and operating parameters, the process can guarantee the highest possible first-run ability of any metal coating process, at the highest possible line speeds you could ever find anywhere else. You can be able to easily control and adjust bath temperature, and the film thickness of the coat can equally be controlled through voltage, something that can only be done through electrocoating.




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