Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Ben Braddock: Yes, sir.
Mr. Mcguire: Are you listening?
Ben Braddock: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Ben Braddock: Just how do you mean that, sir?
The excerpt of dialogue above, from the 1967 film "The Graduate,"
is one of the most memorable exchanges in movie history. It also
proved to be remarkably predictive, given that plastics have come
to play a major role in almost every aspect of daily life.
Almost.
Plastics have been remarkably elusive where powder coating is concerned.
Despite major advancements in both industries, plastics—given that
they are non-conductive—don't lend themselves particularly well
to the application of powder coatings, an electrostatic process.
Nor have they proven to be a very good fit for high-temperature
cures.
Sure, some in-roads have been made recently. In the past eight
years, plastics giants like GE have developed conductive resins
capable of being powder coated. On the curing side, UV curing has
emerged as a means of overcoming the issues associated with curing
in conventional ovens. And interest on the part of finishers is
certainly huge, if the packed room at the "Powder Coating on Plastics"
session at Powder Coating 2004 is any indication. But so far, the
costs associated with many of these solutions has been restrictive,
and a firm handle on powder coating on plastics has remained elusive.
|
Fixtured parts travel
through Alliance's powder coating system on an inverted conveyor
in order to prevent contamination from falling debris.
|
Enter Robert Langlois, the President and CEO of Toronto-based Alliance
Surface Finishing. Three years ago, after selling his company, Surface
Coating Industries (a provider of PVD coating services), to a German
concern, Langlois had a conversation with an automotive Tier One
supplier that would alter the course of his professional life.
"I asked them, 'what would be your dream?'" says Langlois, seated
at a conference table at Alliance's Scientific Research and Experimental
Development Facility in Vaughan, Ontario. "Their response was that
they wanted a cheaper way to paint plastic parts."
Though Langlois had virtually no experience with powder coating,
he knew of its reputation as a clean, cost-effective, flexible technology
with tremendous potential. He also knew that its two biggest hurdles—in
terms of painting plastic parts—were the fact that it requires the
substrate to be charged and that the heat required to cure most
powder coatings would likely compromise many parts.
In many ways, Langlois' inexperience with powder coating enabled
him to take an approach to the problems that was completely unorthodox.
"I think the tendency is for a powder manufacturer to look only
in the direction of the powder coatings" he says. "Likewise, a resins
manufacturer might only look in one direction." Langlois says that,
as someone relatively new to the powder coating industry he was
equipped to take a big-picture look at the obstacles, and come up
with a process that took a number of aspects into consideration."
Langlois also attributes part of Alliance's success to the formal
strategic alliances the company has established with a handful of
industry suppliers, including powder coating supplier PPG.
A full-time PPG staff works out of the Vaughan R&D center,
assisting the Alliance staff with analysis, powder selection, sampling
and line set-up. "We chose PPG because of their very diverse industry
knowledge," says Langlois. "They deal with everything—automotive,
recreational, electronics… There are a lot of [supplier] companies
out there that focus on a specific area, like automotive or industrial.
But we knew that we wouldn't be focusing on a single area. PPG has
a global presence in virtually every industry, just as we think
our technology will appeal to every industry."
Alliance also works closely with Nordson
Corporation, which provided the company with custom-designed
application equipment. On the resins side, Langlois has non-formal
partnerships with BASF and Bayer.
Formula for Success
Langlois, not surprisingly, is keeping the specifics of his process
(which he has patented) under wraps. He does, however, reveal a
few details that offer some clues as to how the process is, and
is not, being performed.
|
Langlois says that his
company's ability to successfully powder coat on plastics relies
in large part on its use of a controlled, contamination-free
environment.
|
He makes clear, for instance, that Alliance's application process—which
is trademarked as the Alliance Powder System—does not rely on the
use of conductive plastics. Instead, the key lies in the powder,
and how it is applied. "Our approach is process-oriented," he says.
"We're powder coating on a wide variety of materials, including
nylons, nylon blends, ABS Blends (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene
copolymers), SMCs (sheet molding compounds), PETs (polyethylene
terephthalates), Lexan® high-temperature polycarbonates and
others."
Langlois also divulges that Alliance's adeptness for powder coating
plastics depends largely on its ability to operate in a controlled
environment, devoid of the variables that often exist in a typical
job shop setting. To that end, the company's production facilities
feature Class "A" paint systems with class 10,000 clean rooms suitable
for class "A" surface automotive finishes, akin to the state-of-the-art
clean rooms found at the highest order of liquid painting.
"We hear a lot of other people say they know someone who is doing
powder coating on plastics," says Langlois. "And there probably
are some people who are doing it on a hit-and-miss basis. But being
able to do something consistently and do it well demands the investment
in custom equipment that we've made, and the controls that we have
in place."
Cleaning, pretreatment, powder coating and curing of parts takes
place within an in-line system using inverted conveyors so that
dirt and oils are not falling down on to parts. Parts are also fixtured,
as opposed to hung, so that gun-to-part distance is constant. Curing
is performed using a combination of IR, UV and traditional convection
ovens.
Currently, Alliance has two facilities, both in the Toronto area—a
75,000-sq-ft, 160-employee, full-time production facility in Mississauga,
Ontario and the aforementioned research and development location
in Vaughan. The production facility has a processing capacity in
excess of seven million sq ft of parts per month.
|
| Alliance
had office chairs, such as the one shown here, on display at
Powder Coating 2004. |
When a new part comes in to Alliance, it does not go straight to
the production facility. Instead, it is sent to the Vaughan location
where it undergoes in-depth analysis in order to determine how it
can be processed most effectively. "We aren't fans of the scattershot
strategy," says Langlois. "Our approach is very scientific in nature
and it's how we handle every new customer and every new part."
Once the part has been thoroughly scrutinized, it is subjected
to a number of test runs at the R&D center's production area,
a scaled-down replica of the system found in Mississauga. There,
engineers tweak virtually every aspect of the application process
in order to generate a recipe for the conditions required to yield
the best finish. It is only once the recipe has been perfected—a
process that can take anywhere from an hour to five days, according
to Langlois—that it is passed on to the computer-driven production
facility. There, in a relatively seamless process, the system is
automatically configured and production begins.
In the Beginning...
Remember that Tier One automotive supplier who told Langlois that
they wanted a cheaper way to paint parts? At the conclusion of that
meeting, Langlois asked them for some parts to powder coat. The
supplier obliged, and the two parties agreed to meet again in the
near future.
Six months later, with his upstart company climbing onto its feet,
Langlois returned to the supplier with the powder coated samples
in hand. In a blind test, his parts were set next to unmarked parts
that had been liquid coated, and five paint experts (from the supplier
company) were asked to select the finish they liked better. When
all five chose the same sample, Langlois asked them why they chose
it. "They said, 'that one is the best, and we know liquid is the
best,'" he says. "I flipped the winning sample over, and it was
ours." The supplier wrote him a purchase order on the spot.
"We used automotive as our starting point," says Langlois, referring
to the industry's notoriously rigid quality requirements. "Once
we tackled automotive, we knew we could do anything."
Anything means anything. Langlois says that, in addition to parts
for a number of automotive suppliers, his company is powder coating
plastic parts for a variety of industries, including recreational
vehicles, appliances, plumbing, electronics, sports equipment and
office furniture.
The latter is of particular interest to Langlois, who says that
his company is currently dealing—on some level—with every major
office furniture manufacturer in North America. One such company
is the Global Group, a maker of office chairs, desks, workstations
and filing systems. Two of Global's bright yellow and black powder
coated office chairs were on display at the recent Powder Coating
2004 show, which had attendees—and more than a few exhibitors—ooh-ing
and aah-ing.
Langlois believes now that a major hurdle has been cleared by his
company. Manufacturers and consumers of plastic products will begin
to better appreciate the attributes of powder coatings, such as
the wide variety of colors (Alliance offers more than 4,500) and
textures available. "One of the great things about powder is its
status as a three-dimensional finish," says Langlois. "With powder,
you can make a rough surface smooth or a smooth surface rough."
The successful application of powder coating to plastics may also
solve some of the color harmony issues that manufacturers routinely
deal with. Companies within the appliance industry, for instance,
have traditionally powder coated the bodies of its washers and dryers
while relying on liquid paint for plastic door handles and other
components. Precise color matching, under those circumstances, can
be difficult, if not impossible. "If we can overcome that issue
by powder coating everything," says Langlois, "I can see the appliance
industry becoming fully committed to powder."
Alliance is currently approaching the mid-point of what Langlois
describes as a "very intensive" five-year roll-out program. In addition
to its two facilities in the Toronto area, Alliance is working with
the State of Michigan to open a 120,000-sq-ft production facility
early this year. A third location is scheduled to open in Tennessee
by year's end.
"The opportunity is certainly there," says Langlois. "We're going
to prove the technology to each and every industry and customer."
ABOUT ALLIANCE SURFACE FINISHING
Based in Vaughan, Ontario, Alliance Surface Finishing applies powder
coatings to non-conductive surfaces such as plastics.
Alliance Surface Finishing
144 Sharer Road
Vaughan, Ontario
Canada L4L 8P4
Phone: (905) 265-2273
Fax: (905) 265-2274
Web: www.asf-powder.com
