Grounds can be tricky. I always check mine with a meter, I hook where my ground lead connects to my controls and then the part and make sure I have continuity.
There have been times when I thought this will have a great ground and I had nothing.
Do you get your ground from a Ground Rod in the ground?
I try do all the hard places first with my KV turned all the way down (if I remember). Do a search on Faraday cage effect and that will help you under stand what the hard areas are.
Grounding in powder coating is like air drying in plasma!
I use mostly Prismatic which I have good luck with. I have used some powder by the pound a few years back.
Here are a couple more you can try
Tiger Drylac (one of the best you can buy)
IFS coatings, I saw this one at Fab Tech and was going to try them but never got around to it.
These two might have 5lbs min which for odd ball colors might be a waste.
Some times your part can build electrical charge and it will repeal powder. I think Dan at right now powder coating made a video on it… he says to knock off powder throwpart in the oven for a few. Let it cool you should be good
I wouldn’t hot flock anything unless you have to you can ruin a paint job in a hurry
I’ve seen the air pressure from the gun blow the powder off the part. I always burn off my pieces between blasting and coating and then start coating when the part is around 140. It makes it stick and less likely to blow off. I’m talking blowing off at less than 5psi…
I paint a lot of step parts for work which is a rung material shaped like a u. Shoot it at 100 kv using the second coat nozzle. Works pretty good doesn’t want to stick with the standard nozzles .
If I have the KV too high or the gun too close it will zap the piece and there’s an instant crater that powder’s not sticking to. I can’t use my gun as close as the one in the video.
Kinda like my first powder coating gun. From harbor freight. Evil Knievel be like I am using that thing… it was like a mad dog it would bit every time it could.
I do have a ground rod hooked to my part hanging bar in the spray booth, the bar is also grounded to the control unit. I will definitely run a continuity test, that’s a good idea.
I’ll also start outgassing my signs after sand blasting, I did it with the first few signs and they worked great. I have done second coats at 140 but I haven’t coated anything hotter than that. Columbia agreed to send a replacement for the paint that messed up, I don’t know why they would hem and haw on $25 of powder and shipping when I just dropped $1500 and everything I’m telling them is on video that they have seen. They told me there was no blue paint in the blue denim that I was seeing blue metallic pearls balling up because the KV was too high. I’m going to run the next one on the nozzle they say at the KV they say, if it works GREAT if it doesn’t I’m moving on to a different manufacturer. I think if preheating the part and letting it cool back down would stop the ionization/faraday the second coat would have laid down better on the matte blue, I’ve read that sharp outside edges can be problematic for adhesion and sometimes the only way to fix it is to round off the corners. Since this is going to be 95% of what I’m painting this coming year I really need to get this sorted out…
You look up dan at right now powder coating he did a video on how to address edge pull. I like his older video he seem very knowledgeable and eager to share.
Yeah they told me they’ve never heard of this issue before and it took several emails just to get them to replace the blue denim paint that wasn’t mixed right. l would call their customer support lackluster at best right now. I will try what they recommended though for spraying that blue denim and if it makes a difference I will be the first to say yup I was wrong.
The super mirror blue I got from them was great, laid down perfect and cured really nice. It’s just the matte finish blue and the metallic blue denim (also a matte finish) that I’ve had problems with. I’ll try it out tomorrow, I have a sign that needs vinyl masking that’s going to get sprayed tomorrow with gold metallic (also matte…) and I’ll try what they recommended on that blue denim while I have the oven hot. I’m really hoping they are right and it was an application error, still doesn’t explain 5 out of 5 hoppers shipping with leaks…although I do think I discovered the issue with the 4 that are leaking from the O-ring, the O-ring is being held on by the plastic hexagon part of the hose barb stem and is making minimal contact with the stem, it needs a washer between the plastic hexagon part and the O-ring to spread the load and keep the O-ring from squishing out. I’ll pick up some appropriate sized washers tomorrow, I suspect they won’t leak after that. Big day tomorrow!
If I can fix their hoppers with something as minimal as a washer they are a fairly decent value. The thread gasket is still an open question though, I do have one hopper leaking from there but that could be a one off. You did say I would love the machine and hate the hoppers, which made their salesman’s reply that they had never heard of issues with their hoppers all the more odd to hear.
