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Powder Coating Several Colors onto one Piece?

Q. Hi,
Recently, I've been asked by the city of San Francisco Arts Commission to do 2 ornamental gate decorations that will be attached to the tops of two pairs of prefabbed gates for a park. They want the ornamental gate decorations to have multiple colors. (It told them this might be very hard and costly to do but I would look into it.)

I was wondering if multiple colors can be powder coated onto the metal in various parts of the ornamental gate decorations? I was thinking about masking off parts of the ornamental gate decorations and using the powder coating process like a silkscreen process: masking off and then powder coating yellow, then masking off and powder coating red, and repeating the process with a different color until I get about 5 colors. Is this possible to do?

If not, does anyone have suggestions?

Your comments are greatly appreciated.

Isis Rodriguez
public artist, ornamental ironwork - San Francisco, California
2007

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Its quite possible to do multi colours by masking, its just awkward, and so expensive.
If your customer will pay for it, then there isn't a problem.

One thing you should think about though is corrosion protection. If you're going to put that much effort into the job, having it go rusty would be a shame. PC is only a barrier protection. Any scratch or chip will allow rust. Galvanizing underneath the PC would save that value of multicolored PC being wasted.

Geoff Crowley
Crithwood Ltd.
Westfield, Scotland, UK

2007

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Keep in mind that the first coat of powder applied is going to go through (up to) 5 cure cycles in the oven. Do you have powder resilient enough to withstand that type of abuse without discoloring or just overbaking and falling off? I'd like to suggest that you powdercoat the entire piece the major color to prevent rusting, then use the powder as a primer by sanding off the gloss(JUST the gloss, do not expose metal) in the minor areas, and then paint the subsequent colors with a high grade automotive paint(powder makes an excellent primer)

Sheldon Taylor
supply chain electronics
Wake Forest, North Carolina
2007

This can be done with two procedures. first use the major color as a base in powder. cure to half the recommended time. next wet paint with water based paint such as Createx .

Air brush or lay up as many colors as wanted. these colors will dry flat. after all paints are dry, use the same chemistry and any gloss you desire, of clear. baked as recommended. I do ghost air brush work on custom motorcycles this way....

James Ewing
- New Cumberland, West Virginia
2007

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This is an amazing site. I wanted to thank all you for answering my question. I will take all your suggestions into consideration.

Isis Rodriguez
- San Francisco, California
2007

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i would like to do a red white blue texas how can I do it
mickey

mickey dees
- lindale Texas
November 24, 2010

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Q. We are doing a coating on lighting part. We used powder on aluminium base and we should do golden colour inner side. Please suggest is it possible golden colour on powder.
Thanking You

satpal singh saini
illumni lighting industries - Mohali, Punjab, India
April 30, 2018