after looking at all the differant options for finishing off some parts i first thought that powder coating would far to expensive and a lot of hassle to pack up and send or even take somewhere to have coated.... i then happend on a site after searching "diy powder coating" it all came apparant that its not rocket science... so the plan was to build a large oven out of metal stud and sheet steel, chuck a couple of heating elements in, a circulation fan, temp contrller and away we go... i actually opted for a largest oven that was being chucked out as it did'nt work...aparently!
so after ripping it apart, finding the fault (which was a faulty grill element) i ordered a PID controller to control the tempreture as domestic oven tempreture controllers sway more than 20-40 degrees either way, i wanted a rock solid 200 degrees for the powder coat to cure. i also installed a timer which is linked to the temp controller.
so now the oven is complete i thought i would get this baby upto tempreture to see if it would catch light and burn my garage down...! well despite the internal insulation it does get pretty warm around the the top of the casing so i have now changed all the internal wiring to high temp fiberglass cable and insulated more around the controllers... no pictures i'm afraid...
Next was to build a spary booth and cabinet to put the oven in... i had ideas of biulding something from scratch but after wondering around B&Q i found that it was so much cheaper to buy a couple of 600mm wide kitchen cabinets and screw these together... i had some old wheel knocking around and so i amde the whole thing movable. the spray booth just consists of the cabinet with the void at the back which would noramally hide the services in a kitchen made in to a plenum for the extraction system which i hope will work. its very basic using a hoover to pull the air in the booth through a air con box filter. i added a couple of low voltage lights to see what i was doing and a ali rail inside to hang work on which is wired into the earth clip for the powder coating gun. the gun i got online from honka konka (my indering term for hong kong) cheap and cheerfull as a starter gun.. if i get into this i will buy better...i have to say... my very first attempt (last picture) is very pleasing and i think i'm going to have fun with this.... kinda think i'm gonna powder coat everthing in site..... !!