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This is not automotive ceramic sealant or paint protection film. Cerakote here is a sprayed ceramic-polymer coating applied to threaded fasteners, close-fit assemblies, suppressor and firearms components, valves, fittings and aerospace hardware — parts where a powder build would have to be masked out or machined off. Rowlett, Texas.
If you arrived looking for a ceramic coating for a car’s paint, this is the wrong shop and we would rather say so in one line than waste your afternoon. Gleco Paint & Powder Coating is an industrial job shop. We coat production hardware to a drawing, in quantity, for manufacturers and defense subcontractors. If that is what you have, keep reading — and if you are still deciding between processes, the finish selector → is the faster route.
Cerakote is a ceramic-polymer coating: a polymer resin loaded with ceramic filler, sprayed wet from a solvent carrier and then cured. Mechanically it behaves like a very thin, very hard paint. The reason it exists as a separate process — the only reason worth putting on a drawing — is film build.
Cerakote’s Elite Series is specified at 0.75 mil dry film, with a working band of 0.65–0.90 mil. That is seven ten-thousandths of an inch. H-Series runs 1 to 2 mils depending on color, and the clear runs thinner still. Powder coating, by comparison, needs roughly 2 to 4 mils per surface to cover reliably, with about 1.5 mils as a practical floor.
On a flat bracket nobody cares about that difference. On a thread, a bore, a sliding fit or a bolted joint with a stack-up, it decides the job. Everything below follows from that one fact. The full head-to-head lives on Cerakote vs powder coating →; if liquid paint is the third candidate, read paint vs powder vs Cerakote →, and for aluminum where anodize is also on the table, Cerakote vs anodizing vs powder coating →.
Anything the coating cannot be allowed to grow into.
The market Cerakote was built for, run as a production process.
Where thin, hard and heat-tolerant beats thick and protective.
Two questions sort most parts in under a minute. Does a 2–4 mil build interfere with a fit, a thread or a seal? And does the part have to go through an oven hotter than 300°F to be powder coated, when it cannot? A yes to either points at Cerakote. A no to both usually points at powder coating →, which is cheaper per part and tougher per mil. The design guide → works through the dimensional side in more detail.
Cerakote is a family of products, not one coating, and the series decides cure route, film build and heat tolerance. Figures below are from Cerakote’s published technical data sheets and are attributed to the series they belong to. Confirm the current TDS revision for your color at RFQ — several values vary color by color.
| Series | Cure route | Published film build | Heat and corrosion | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| H-Series | Oven cure. 250°F for 2 hours, or 300°F for 1 hour. | 1–2 mils depending on color; the high-gloss clear is specified as low as 0.25 mil. | TDS gives coating stability 500°F and above; color stability varies by color, from 250°F upward. | The general-purpose workhorse. Widest color range. |
| Elite Series | Oven cure. 300°F for 1 hour (Blackout E-100 is 2 hours). | 0.75 mil nominal, 0.65–0.90 mil band. The thinnest of the family. | Published at 4,000+ hours ASTM B117 salt spray. Coating stability 500°F and above. | Precision hardware and the corrosion-driven jobs. |
| C-Series and Glacier | Air cure, no oven. Tack free in 45–60 minutes, partial cure at 24 hours, full cure at five days. | 1.0–2.0 mils from a single application. | Cerakote publishes continuous service to 1,800°F for the Glacier products — a product claim for that series, not a shop test result. | Exhaust, headers and parts that cannot see an oven at all. |
The cure temperature is the part of this table that surprises people. Even the hottest Cerakote route runs at 300°F, roughly a hundred degrees below a typical powder cure of 350–400°F part metal temperature. On temper-sensitive aluminum, on assemblies with a component that will not take a powder oven, or on a part already carrying a finish that would not survive one, that gap is frequently the whole reason the job comes to Cerakote rather than to powder or liquid paint →. Tell us the alloy and temper at quote and we will confirm the substrate tolerates the cure before parts are booked.
Cerakote publishes over 200 standard colors and finishes across the series, in gloss levels from flat through high gloss, and colors inside a series can be blended to a custom shade. For most industrial and defense hardware the standard catalog closes the question without a conversation.
The limit worth knowing before you specify: Cerakote is not formulated to the RAL or AMS-STD-595 chip systems. We can mix and spray a close visual match to a chip, and on most hardware that is entirely adequate. What we will not do is call it a certified colorimetric match, because it is not one — gloss and surface texture will read differently from a coating built to those standards even when the hue is right.
If your drawing carries an AMS-STD-595 number with a color tolerance attached, or specifies a gloss and infrared signature the way a CARC callout does, that is a liquid job, not a Cerakote job. Route it to industrial liquid coating → and read what CARC coating actually requires →. Part marking, legends and color-coded identification are handled separately by silkscreening →.
Cerakote is a mechanical-adhesion coating. Nearly every failure traced back to the shop floor is a preparation failure, so the prep is not negotiable and it is the part of the process that most affects what you have to send us.
Surface prep, masking and blasting → · masking for coating →
Cerakote is genuinely hard and genuinely corrosion resistant for its thickness. Elite Series is published at 4,000+ hours ASTM B117, which is a strong number by any coating’s standard. Chemical resistance is good against solvents, fuels and common shop fluids. Heat tolerance is better than most organic coatings, and the air-cured Glacier products are published for continuous service far above anything powder will hold.
The caveats matter as much as the numbers. Salt-spray hours are a comparative laboratory result, not a service life — B117 does not predict how a part behaves on a truck in East Texas. Cerakote does not publish Taber abrasion data in the H-Series or Elite technical data sheets, so we do not quote an abrasion figure for it. And the whole discussion is happening at three quarters of a thousandth: there is simply less material there than on a powder-coated part, and thin coatings do not tolerate impact and gouging the way thick ones do.
Where something else wins:
Cerakote is sprayed, part by part, hand racked, with a prep sequence per part. That economics does not improve with quantity the way an electrostatic powder line does. Three situations where we will tell you to pick something else:
Part size, batch quantity and lead time are quoted job by job rather than published as limits, because they depend on the part. Send the drawing and we will tell you plainly whether Cerakote is the right call or whether you should be on another one of our lines →. Everything — blasting, masking, Cerakote, powder, liquid and part marking — runs at the same Rowlett plant, which is the point of keeping it under one roof →.
Gleco Paint & Powder Coating is a certified applicator of Cerakote. The coatings division operates under AS9100D and ISO 9001:2015, is ITAR Registered and DFARS compliant, and is MIL-Spec and CARC capable. We are the coatings division of Gleco Plating, family-owned in Texas since 1979. Full scope, certificate details and what each approval does and does not cover are on certifications and approvals →, and our environmental and materials position is on sustainability →.
Cerakote runs only at our Rowlett facility — 5020 Grisham Drive, Rowlett, TX 75088 — and serves manufacturers, machine shops and defense subcontractors across the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. Most customers ship or drop parts; drawings and quantities travel by email either way.
Dallas → · Fort Worth → · Garland → · Plano → · Irving → · Arlington → · Grand Prairie → · Mesquite → · Richardson → · Carrollton →
The full list, with directions and what runs where, is on service areas →. If you are a contract shop coating on behalf of your own customer, job shops and fabricators → covers how we handle that.
No. Automotive “ceramic coating” is a consumer detailing product — a sealant applied over paint to make it easier to wash. Cerakote is a sprayed, blasted-and-baked industrial coating applied to bare metal hardware to a drawing. We do not do automotive detailing, paint protection film or vehicle paint correction. We coat production parts for manufacturers.
Sometimes, and the arithmetic is worth doing before you assume it. A film of thickness t on the thread flanks raises pitch diameter by roughly four times t. Elite at 0.75 mil therefore adds about three thousandths on pitch diameter, which is enough to close out the allowance on a small Class 2A thread. Larger and coarser threads absorb it comfortably; small fine-pitch threads often do not. Tell us the thread callout and whether it is coated or masked, and we will check it rather than guess.
Almost always, yes. The part is abrasive blasted, solvent degreased and then baked at 300°F before coating, and springs, seals, bearings, optics, adhesives and most polymers will not survive that sequence. Send components rather than assemblies. If disassembly is genuinely impractical, raise it at quote — sometimes selective masking works, often it does not, and it is better to find out before the parts arrive.
Yes. Aluminum is one of the most common substrates for it, and the low cure temperature is part of the reason — the oven-cured series run at 250–300°F, well below a typical powder cure. Give us the alloy and temper at quote so we can confirm the cure will not affect the condition of the material. If the part is aluminum and anodize is also a candidate, this comparison → is the place to start.
It depends on the series. Elite is specified at 0.75 mil dry film with a 0.65–0.90 mil working band. H-Series runs 1 to 2 mils depending on color, and the high-gloss clear can go as thin as 0.25 mil. C-Series and Glacier are 1.0–2.0 mils from a single application. If the print has a dimensional constraint, tell us the constraint and we will select the series to fit it rather than the other way round.
For corrosion, yes — Elite Series is published at 4,000+ hours ASTM B117, which is strong. For long-term UV and weathering on parts that live outside permanently, a superdurable polyester or fluoropolymer powder is the better engineering choice. Salt-spray hours are a laboratory comparison, not a service life, and we will not present them as one.
We run Cerakote as an industrial job-shop process, so firearms and suppressor components from manufacturers and OEMs are squarely in scope — tubes, mounts, receivers, rails and small parts, coated in quantity to a drawing. One-off refinishing of a personal firearm is not what this line is set up for. Any licensing, transfer or ITAR handling question gets settled in writing at RFQ before parts ship.
We can mix and spray a close visual match, and for most hardware that is fine. We will not represent it as a certified colorimetric match, because Cerakote is not formulated to those chip systems and the gloss and texture will read differently. If the drawing carries a color tolerance or a CARC-type callout, that is a liquid coating → job.
Tell us the substrate, the fits that have to survive and what the part sees in service. We will tell you whether Cerakote is right for it or whether powder or liquid is the better call — and we run all three, so there is nothing in it for us either way.
