Powder coat striping with heat

[dougweil]

Hi all:

I am working on an RV-7 slider. The gray powder coat on the canopy frame, rollbar, and rollbar brace needs to be removed and re-coated to match my off-white interior. I know there are several ways to do this (chemical, bead-blasting, etc). There is a larger commercial powder coat facility nearby that I may use for the refinish job. They use a burn-off oven to strip powder-coated items. Typically an item is in the oven at 900 degrees for 8 hours which results in the coating burning away. This seems to be an industry standard for commercial type operations and I was wondering if anyone is familiar with this process on 4130 steel. The shop indicates no problems. The heating and cooling is done on a specific time schedule but initially I was wondering about warpage.

Any thoughts?

[Kyle Boatright]

I'd be worried about warpage too. Have you fitted the bubble yet? If so, I wouldn't expose the frame to that kind of heat. In all honesty, I probably wouldn't expose it to that kind of heat anyway.

Can't you just paint over it? I'd guess the initial factory powder coating is a great corrosion barrier and I'd hate to remove it.

[ChiefPilot]

Originally Posted by dougweil

Hi all:

I am working on an RV-7 slider. The gray powder coat on the canopy frame, rollbar, and rollbar brace needs to be removed and re-coated to match my off-white interior. I know there are several ways to do this (chemical, bead-blasting, etc). There is a larger commercial powder coat facility nearby that I may use for the refinish job. They use a burn-off oven to strip powder-coated items. Typically an item is in the oven at 900 degrees for 8 hours which results in the coating burning away. This seems to be an industry standard for commercial type operations and I was wondering if anyone is familiar with this process on 4130 steel. The shop indicates no problems. The heating and cooling is done on a specific time schedule but initially I was wondering about warpage.

Any thoughts?

I went through this thought process a few months ago for my slider and came to the conclusion that while heating it might not negatively impact the frame and roll bar, a chemical strip followed by primer and paint most certainly would not. The whole process actually went quite smoothly, and I wouldn't hesitate to do it again.

[kiwipete]

I recently had my engine mount chemically stripped, dropped it off in the morning and picked it up later the same day. We just made sure it was well cleaned before the new powder coat was put on, came out great.

Cost was ?20 so I would think $ would be similar

Peter

[Sparky]

Doug,

Call Ralph Edwards at SE Custom Powdercoating in Savage. He did all the powdercoating on my RV-7 (instrument panel, canopy frame, brake pedals, tailwheel spring/fork, brake resevoir, oil/fuel pressure manifold, canopy rails, canopy handles, etc.) and has the Van's Gray (almost white) powder in stock. His work is excellent and prices reasonable (ask him for the "retired-NWA" discount). I believe he does chemical stripping. I ordered my canopy frame uncoated from Van's so he didn't have to strip any of my parts.

SE Custom Powdercoating Inc
12375 Zinran Ave # 3
Savage, MN 55378-2385
(952) 890-7373‎

[fl-mike]

Lightly sand and paint. No need to re-powdercoat.
A Badger 250 airbrush works great for this kind of painting.

[yakdriver]

I changed the color on my canopy frame. The powdercoater just sanded the powder coat that was on there and re coated it with the new color. Worked great for 200hrs so far.