More productivity through NT primer
Rotocoat, a leading contract coater, eliminates capacity bottlenecks with NT technology. The company focuses on durability. For this reason, a large proportion of the orders are coated in two coats and a high-quality NT powder is used as a primer. Quality awareness for contract coaters can pay off, especially in demanding applications.
Particularly in difficult times, the temptation is greater than usual to accept orders whose profitability is already doubtful in advance. In particular, the fact that the direct costs of material consumption are often virtually negligible tempts companies to underestimate the amount of work involved and thus the costs of plant technology, but also of their own employees.
The more the job costing is based on experience, the more likely this is to happen. Freely according to the motto, if you get 500 Euros for an order and only have to buy powder for about 100 Euros, you will get something out of it. This works well as long as there are always enough better paid orders to absorb the miscalculations.
Hot-dip galvanizing is still one of the most durable and robust protective coatings against corrosion. Even though this basically provides excellent corrosion protection under normal atmospheric conditions, additional organic protective coatings are often either useful or even necessary in highly corrosive environments. However, optical criteria also increasingly lead to the decision to additionally paint a hot-dip galvanized surface.
Duplex from a single source
If this is to be done by powder coating, it requires considerable know-how and tact on the part of the coater to compensate for the peculiarities of hot-dip zinc, such as its tendency to outgas at higher temperatures, as a substrate. That is why Rotocoat, part of the Roto Group, operates powder coating operations at two sites in addition to its four hot-dip galvanizing plants in Holland, and has become one of the leading surface finishers in the Netherlands.
Thus, in addition to hot-dip galvanizing, the Heerhugowaard and Wolvega sites have established powder coating lines and offer duplex coatings from a single source. Specialization has emerged at the two sites, with Heerhugowaard using an automated coating line to process mainly heavy components with high wall thicknesses and offering only blasting as a pretreatment. Wolvega, on the other hand, processes mainly lighter components with low wall thicknesses, down to one millimeter. Pretreatment options include both blasting and wet chemical pretreatment based on chromium III. In total, Wolvega has three coating lines in operation, a fully automated Power & Free automatic line that paints 24 hours a day, plus a manual line for large parts and a separate line for small parts.
