Idea for Powder coating

[bitshird]

I just inherited a HF powder coating gun and transformer and about 10 pounds of powder, a guy owed me for a pen so I traded.
In order to keep powder out of the tubes, can I put a cork or rubber stopper in the top, and let the bottom be the ground contact area, having the tubes sit on 1/4 20 screws that have had the threads partially turned down so as to have a snug fit, with about ¼ inch full threaded to stop powder from getting in from the bottom? Make racks for about 8 tubes about 1 inch apart, or would that be too close / far apart
I've heard that the HF powders are not the best, the man I got it from got most of his powder from eastman or eastwood, all I really need is white, I have two blacks, several reds, anodized red and blue even some chrome, and clear, I’ve used this powder for coloring epoxy to fill in some CNC plates I did Now I need to find out how to use the gun.
Ken Ferrell

 

[Firefyter-emt]

Ken, the "cork" be it rubber or natural needs to A) survive 20min at 400+ degrees and B)not bridge the PC to the cork. They have a special high temp silicoln (sp?) plugs that are used for this. Eastwood sells them so if you have to order powder, just buy some from them. Just make sure that you have the clearnace if you are using a toaster oven. I tried to do the very same thing and the way the rack is built, the heat tubes were right above them and they did start to melt! (1/2" away @ 400 degrees) EDIT: I also just remembered, it took a bit to clean off the plugs with acetone, in fact much more that it takes to just rung a round file in the tube to remove the powder that does sneak in.

I have my rack set to 2" x 2" apart and I would like a little extra room to be honest, you still need to work the gun around a bit to coat the tubes. 1" would be very hard to work around with the gun. I would try to keep the tubes off the bottom as they will "bond" when baked. I use tinfoil to bridge the gap myself.

I have a bottle of HF white and I have not been able to get full coverage with one coat yet, the Eastwood black nails it every time though.

One more thing to play with. I am working on a "turn table" with an all metal lazy susan bearing. This will be set up so that the ground clip can be attached to the bottom half of the lazy susan and the top will have a wire and clip where the top board is attached to the bearing with screws. This will allow me to be able to stay in one place and spin the tubes nice and easy to coat them.

 

[bitshird]

Thanks Lee, This is going to be one more learning curve[]or is that an acute learning angle.
Ken Ferrell