Electrocoating

Electroplating 1 Sep 2011

A Mighty Wind for Finishers

Here in the U.S., the wind energy market grew by about 60 percent from 2009 to 2010, and with more than 40,000 installed megawatts, we rank second to China. Those numbers have caught the attention of finishers, who see a new market to plate parts, e-coat or powder coat turbines, or paint and anodize the hundreds of necessary components.

Electroplating 1 Sep 2011

Measuring the Surface Area of Fasteners

How do you measure the surface area of a threaded fastener? How much coating would you put on it? How thick of a coating? What about non-threaded fasteners? The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, of all people, may have come up with the solution for those pondering how to coat sometimes-difficult small pieces using computer imaging and software to compute the area.

Electrocoating 29 Aug 2011

Protective Coatings Properties are Topic of Proposed New ASTM Standard

Dry fall coatings are manufactured and sold by a number of coating manufacturers and their inherent dry fall properties are critical in avoiding damage to property adjacent to and below spraying operations, yet there is no known standardized procedure to evaluate whether these coatings possess dry fall properties on surfaces of varying temperature.

Electrocoating 26 Aug 2011

Drop in Film Thickness

We recently found that film thickness across the board at our e-coat plant has massively decreased, from 35 microns to around 27 microns.

Electrocoating 26 Aug 2011

Blisters During Corrosion Testing

We are coating parts that are hot-dip galvanized, and we fail corrosion tests because we develop blisters. How can we investigate the root cause?

Liquid Coating 18 Aug 2011

Investigation of Tin Whisker Formation

Immersion tin and lead-free hot air solder leveling (HASL) coatings based on SnCu or SnAgCu alloys are widely used as surface finish materials for printed circuit boards (PCB). These coatings prevent the underlying copper from corrosion and preserve its solderability during lead-free assembly processes and for a long storage life of PCBs.