Powder-Coating

[Hotaru]

Hey all,

If one were to invest in a mid sized oven, powder and gun, would there be a market for powder coating markers?

I'm looking into doing some of this for my own purposes, and will not be able to do anything for a number of months; however, I would like to find out if there is any interest.

[harleywrench001]

As long as you practiced on your own stuff and posted pics to show you learned how to do it well, then yeah I'd send you a few items.

[Hotaru]

Of course. I would want to have an extensive portfolio before I offered my services publicly. I will keep this in mind and get my shop running as soon as I can.

[Shirow]

I think so, I had my mag cerakoted and it has held up very well.

I think it's a lot easier in some ways, don't have to remove clip/ring, you can do barrels if you bead blast the outside without damaging the bore size etc..

[Hotaru]

External coatings are possible on anything metal with powder coating. Plugs and high temp tape make things easier.

[luke]

You would be better off starting an anno shop.

[maniacmechanic]

You would be better off starting an anno shop.

^^^ Voice of Experience

[Hotaru]

That is probably true if I were looking to only do alloys such as aluminum, titanium, magnesium and zinc; however, I am looking into working with aluminum only part of the time. I will be using carbon steel and stainless steel more than aluminum.

All in all, Anodizing is not cost effective for my small shop I am planning on starting this year. I was only asking if there might be some people interested in getting their markers powder coated that I could help out if I had some spare time.

Paintball will not be my primary focus with my shop. I will be looking into machining and powder coating many other items from automotive to firearm accessories.

[PAINTHEY]

[Hotaru]

Indeed. I recently purchased some for a few springfeeds I am going to make. I plan on getting them powder coated before it is all done.

[luke]

Powdercoating has been offered here on AO for many years.

[Shirow]

Powdercoating has been offered here on AO for many years.

Is there someone consistent still doing it though? I have mine done by Ion Coatings and it was fine but they seemed to disappear (at least, I got a few messages from people asking if I had contact info for Tyler as he had stopped replying)

I wouldn't mind having some other stuff done at some point but people always seem to give up pretty quickly.

[luke]

I still offer it but just black, here is a full fledge PC shop listed in the dealer forum>> http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?t=244349

[bbotts77]

I think so, I had my mag cerakoted and it has held up very well.

The frame still looks great.

[VooDoo_Coatings]

Is there someone consistent still doing it though? I have mine done by Ion Coatings and it was fine but they seemed to disappear (at least, I got a few messages from people asking if I had contact info for Tyler as he had stopped replying)

I wouldn't mind having some other stuff done at some point but people always seem to give up pretty quickly.

I am still here and still coating. LOL. When we get a few large production orders in the shop we stop taking additional work from the forums until we get caught back up. This to keeps us from getting backed up with work and causing our customers to be without their markers for long periods of time.

As for the original poster it would be very hard to recoup the money you paid for a good oven and coating equipment with just paintball related items. You are looking at $1000.00+ for a quality application gun with a fluidizing hopper and about $3500.00 for a decent sized oven. Then you will need a large compressor, media blasting cabinet and pressure pot blaster, cleaning tank, mil thickness gauge, stripper tank, iron phosphate dip tank, and a lot of other things to get you where you need to be to do quality work on a large enough scale to turn a profit. So you are looking at $6000.00 minimum to get a bare bones powder coating shop up and running if you already have a large shop. You can do it cheaper with cheap application guns and a used kitchen oven but you will have trouble producing decent work consistently. The little harbor freight / caswell cup guns will give you fits trying to apply multiple coats of powder and the kitchen oven is to small and will not give you very precise control over your cure temp.

As for profits, I would say that about 5-10% of my income comes from paintball related items so no I don't think there would be enough interest to justify starting up a new operation especially when there are other established coaters on the forum such as Luke and Myself. I make a living coating but if I relied on the paintball industry to pay the bills I would be begging on the streets. LOL. I offer coating services for the paintball industry solely because I have a passion for the sport.