While most powder coating occurs in industrial environments, there are ways you can perform small-scale DIY powder coating in Washington from the comfort of your own home. A household oven or even a toaster oven can be used to powder coat smaller parts in batches of limited sizes. Of course, you wouldn’t want to use them to perform massive jobs, because it would take you significantly longer than if you were using industrial equipment.
You can also create your own oven for powder coating at home. This is a bit more complex than just using your own oven or toaster oven, but still will cost you less and require less space than a lot of industrial-sized powder coating ovens. For this, you’ll need some skills with tools and some patience to try something new if this is a kind of job you haven’t taken on previously.
Here’s a quick overview of how to create your own powder coating oven.
Process and materials
The general construction involves the use of a steel stud and track frame that gets riveted together. You’ll also use 20-gauge sheet metal around the entire oven except the floor, which is 16-gauge sheet metal, allowing it to support the weight of a powder coating rack. All of your materials can be purchased from any big box hardware store.
You’ll start by framing out the oven with galvanized steel studs and track. You can find these steel studs in 10’ or 8’ lengths. Buy a bunch—you’ll need them! Working with them is easy because they are pretty thin, so you can cut them with a chop saw (with the correct blade) or with tin snips. If you go with tin snips, make sure you get a good set since you’ll be getting a lot of use out of them.
All the framing will be fastened with rivets, which are cheap and easy to use. We recommend purchasing a good pneumatic rivet gun to use for the project and future metal work. You don’t need a high-end tool, but definitely a reliable one. You’ll need steel rivets because it is a steel build.
You’ll start by framing out the floor, making sure to add support studs. You’ll then use the same procedure for the walls, placing the walls on top of the floor one at a time and riveting them into the floor and to each other, and capping it off with the ceiling. You’ll then be able to skin the inside with sheet metal, beginning again with the floor and then following with the walls and the ceiling. Use a Dremel tool to cut out the spaces in the walls where the heating elements will need to go, then add in the blowers, ducting, lighting and other elements.
You’re going to want to follow a detailed set of directions to get you through the build without any issue—this is just a very basic overview of what you can expect from the project. For more info about powder coating at home in Washington—or to entrust your project to experienced professionals—contact Powder Vision Inc. today.