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Electrostatic powder application with blasting, chemical pretreatment, masking, cure and inspection under one roof in Rowlett, Texas – for defense, aerospace, electronics, transportation and industrial manufacturers across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
Powder coating is a dry finish. Resin, crosslinker, pigment and additives are ground to a powder, given an electrostatic charge at the gun, and sprayed at a grounded part. The charge holds the powder in place – there is no solvent doing that job – and the part then goes into an oven, where the powder melts, flows out and crosslinks into a thermoset film that will not re-melt. That is the whole mechanism, and every consequence below falls out of it.
The film is thick. A normal single coat lands around 2 to 3 mils – 60 to 80 microns – and is measured in thousandths of an inch, not tenths of a thousandth. Powder begins to repel itself electrostatically around 4 to 5 mils, so you cannot easily bury a part; equally, you cannot ask powder to go on at half a mil the way a thin liquid primer will. If the drawing has a thin-film requirement, powder is the wrong process, and the powder versus liquid comparison is where to start.
The cure is real heat. Most powders want the part metal at roughly 350 to 400 degF and held there – a standard polyester typically 400 degF for 10 minutes at part temperature, an epoxy 350 to 375 degF for 10 to 15, a urethane 325 to 375 degF for 15 to 20. Part temperature is the number that matters, and the clock only starts once the metal reaches it: a thin bracket takes minutes, a heavy weldment or casting considerably longer. That rules out heat-sensitive substrates, bonded or gasketed assemblies, anything containing bearings, seals, electronics or adhesives, and any part whose temper you cannot afford to disturb.
The finish is genuinely tough at volume. A crosslinked thermoset film at 2 to 3 mils resists impact, chipping and abrasion better than most single-coat liquid systems, goes on in one pass with no solvent flash, and overspray is reclaimable rather than emitted. That is why powder wins on brackets, frames, enclosures, weldments and fabricated structures at production volume. Where it does not win, we say so – see paint versus powder versus Cerakote or run the finish selector.
“Powder coated” says nothing about performance. The resin does. The single most common specification error we see is an epoxy or a hybrid put outdoors, so start there: any epoxy content in a powder will chalk and degrade in sunlight, in months rather than years. That is a property of the chemistry, not a quality problem, and no amount of film build fixes it.
Chosen for chemical and solvent resistance, adhesion and mechanical toughness, and it cures at the low end of the range. Interior service only, or as the primer under a weatherable topcoat.
Blends, commonly around 70/30, 60/40 or 50/50. Better yellowing stability through cure than straight epoxy and a good decorative appearance at a sensible cost. Still contains epoxy, so still indoor.
The default for anything that sees weather. Good color and gloss stability, good overbake tolerance, lower chemical resistance than epoxy. Standard grades hold color and gloss for roughly 12 to 18 months of severe South Florida exposure before visible fade.
Excellent flow, a smoother thin-film appearance than most polyesters, good weathering and better chemical resistance where the environment demands it. Longer, hotter cure and usually a higher cost per pound.
Where a standard polyester is not enough. Superdurable polyester and superdurable urethane grades are formulated to survive up to about five years of South Florida exposure before visible degradation, and they depend on high-performance inorganic or automotive-grade organic pigments – standard organic pigments fade in 18 to 24 months regardless of the resin under them.
Fluoropolymer architectural powders resist degradation for a minimum of ten years, with field studies running 20 to 30, at the cost of a restricted, largely inorganic color palette. Ceramic and PTFE-type powders are also available for heat and release requirements.
Edge coverage is a formulation property and a design property at once. Field lines distort at a sharp edge and molten powder pulls back from it during flow-out, so a corner can finish at 30 to 50 per cent of the film thickness on the adjacent flat. Textured and structured powders hold an edge better than smooth ones because they gel faster and flow less. So does a radius on the print – see the coating design guide.
If the drawing carries a military callout rather than a commercial one, the type and class do the same job the resin family does here. Start at MIL-PRF-24712.
Gloss runs from dead matte through satin and semi-gloss to high gloss; texture from smooth through fine and coarse to wrinkle and vein finishes. Texture is not only decorative – a textured or wrinkled powder hides substrate imperfection, weld grain and handling marks that a high-gloss smooth finish amplifies, and it covers edges better. Solid colors, tints, fluorescents, candies and chromes are all available, and custom shades can be sourced.
Color is specified three ways. A RAL number, an AMS-STD-595 number for military and government work – the successor to FED-STD-595, with the same five-digit numbers – or a physical sample you send us for a custom match. We buy through the major powder manufacturers, including DuPont, Sherwin-Williams and Tiger-Drylac, which is what makes a match sourceable rather than theoretical.
The honest limits. A powder is matched to a physical standard, not a screen value, so send the chip, the cap or the painted part – not a hex code. Matching a powder to an existing liquid color is the hard case: the two use different pigment and resin systems, so coatings that read identical under shop light can separate under daylight, and a gloss or texture difference makes a correct hue look wrong. Metallics and candies are hardest, because flake orientation is set by the spray and the melt rather than by a solvent flash. Approve a custom match on a sprayed panel at the specified gloss, and expect some batch variation on repeats. Where the color has to be legible as a marking, silkscreening over the cured film beats trying to spray it. Defense color numbers are decoded on the MIL-spec and CARC page.
Almost every adhesion failure and almost every early corrosion failure traces back to preparation, not to the powder. Powder has no solvent to bite through a contaminant and no time to wet a dirty surface – it lands, melts and crosslinks in place. Whatever is under it stays under it.
Media blasting removes mill scale, rust, old coating and weld discoloration, and leaves an anchor profile for the film to key into. Profile is a specification in its own right: too little and there is nothing to grip, too much and the peaks stand up into a 2 to 3 mil film. Media follows the substrate – what strips steel will deform thin aluminum or embed in a soft alloy. We degrease and steam clean before blasting, because blasting an oily part drives the oil into the profile. Full detail on prep, masking and blasting.
A phosphate or equivalent conversion coating does two things a blast cannot. It converts the surface into an inorganic layer the powder bonds to chemically rather than only mechanically, and it puts a corrosion-resistant film under the coating so that when the film is eventually scratched, corrosion does not run laterally beneath it. The chemistry differs by substrate: iron phosphate is standard under powder on steel, while aluminum takes a chromate or chrome-free conversion treatment. Tell us the alloy, not just “metal” – it changes the pretreatment.
Two failure modes worth naming at RFQ. Castings outgas: porosity in a casting or a hot-dip galvanized surface releases gas as the part heats, and that gas comes up through the melting film as pinholes and craters, which is why an outgas-forgiving primer or a pre-bake gets specified. And previously coated parts need the old finish gone, not covered – recoating over an unknown film is how you inherit somebody else’s adhesion problem.
Anodizing, plating and passivation are not done at the Paint & Powder facility – they are the plating side of the business, and the two sites run as one supply chain. See coating and plating under one roof, or go direct to glecoplating.com.
Powder does not know which surfaces are functional. It coats threads, bearing bores, dowel holes, sealing faces, mating flanges and electrical ground paths exactly as willingly as the outside of a bracket. At 2 to 3 mils per surface, a coated internal thread will not accept its fastener and a coated ground pad will not pass a bonding check.
Masking uses high-temperature tape, silicone plugs and caps, and custom fixtures where the geometry needs one. It is planned from the print, which is the point: a mask called out on the drawing costs a few cents and a minute; removing cured thermoset from a thread afterwards costs a chase, a re-blast, a recoat or a scrapped part. Cured powder does not wipe off.
What to give us: the surfaces to keep free, whether “free” means bare metal or simply within tolerance, ground and bonding paths, and any surface a gasket or seal lands on. Marked on the print or on a sketch is fine. The conventions and the common misses are on masking: what to call out.
Five things on a print change what a powder coater can deliver, and all five are cheaper to fix in CAD than on the line.
Every part hangs from something and every hook leaves a witness mark at the ground contact. Designate a hanging feature – an existing hole, a tab, a non-critical face – or we choose one for you. Ground is carried through the hook, so a hook that has built up coating from previous runs is a defect source, not a fixture.
Pockets, box sections and blind cavities trap pretreatment solution and rinse water, which then boils out in the oven and ruins the film. Vent and drain features let a part leave the wash dry and the oven clean.
A sharp edge thins the film; a deep recess or narrow inside corner suffers Faraday cage effects where charged powder will not reach. A small radius, and gun access into the recess, are worth more than any powder upgrade.
Mating faces, press fits, sliding fits and dowel locations lose clearance by the film thickness on each surface, so a hole loses roughly twice the film across its diameter. Allow for it in the tolerance or mask it. Deciding after the parts are coated is the expensive route.
The full set, with the callout language, is in the coating design guide, and the procurement-side version is on buyer and engineer information.
A powder callout on a defense or aerospace drawing is a system, not a color. Pretreatment, primer, topcoat, film build, cure and inspection each have to come from somewhere, and a coater who quietly fills the gaps is making engineering decisions on your behalf. The specifications have their own pages rather than being duplicated here:
The quality system behind those callouts – AS9100D, ISO 9001:2015, ITAR Registered, DFARS and RoHS – is set out on certifications and approvals.
We would rather quote the right process than win the wrong one. Powder is not the answer when:
| The requirement | Why powder struggles | Where to look instead |
|---|---|---|
| Thin film – under about 2 mils, or a specified primer at well under 1 mil | Electrostatic deposition and melt flow set a practical floor well above a thin liquid primer | Liquid and industrial paint |
| Heat-sensitive substrate or temper you cannot disturb | Cure needs the part metal at roughly 350 to 400 degF and held there | Cerakote or air-dry liquid systems |
| Assemblies with seals, bearings, electronics, adhesives or dissimilar materials | The whole assembly goes through the oven, not just the surface you want coated | Liquid coating, or coat detail parts before assembly |
| Very small, dimensionally critical hardware | 2 to 3 mils per surface is a large fraction of a small feature, and masking it may cost more than the part | Plating or conversion coating at glecoplating.com |
| Field touch-up, one-offs, or frequent color changes on short runs | Powder is a production process; color change has a real cost | Liquid coating |
| Maximum hardness at minimum film on firearms and precision hardware | Different job entirely | Cerakote vs anodizing vs powder |
If you are still choosing, the finish selector narrows it in a few questions, and the resources library has the comparisons in full.
The first question most buyers ask, so here is the answer without a phone call. We run two cure ovens in Rowlett, each with an internal working envelope of 8 ft high by 8 ft wide by 12 ft deep.
Those are the oven’s own measured internal dimensions. The largest part we can actually cure is a little under that in every direction, because the part has to hang clear of the walls and the floor and air has to move around it. A long, slim weldment uses the 12 ft depth well; a tall, wide fabrication is limited by the 8 ft opening.
If your part is close to those numbers, send the print or the overall dimensions with the hang points and we will tell you straight away whether it fits, and how we would rack it. If it does not fit, we will say so rather than take the order and find out later.
Enclosures and chassis for electronics manufacturers, where masking ground paths and connector faces is the whole job. Ground support and vehicle hardware for defense and military programs, and detail parts and tooling for aerospace. Frames, brackets and structural weldments for automotive and heavy truck builders. Skids, guarding and equipment housings for industrial and energy customers. Exterior architectural and OEM work in superdurable grades for architectural and OEM accounts. Cleanable, chemically resistant finishes for medical device housings. And overflow, prototype and production runs for job shops and fabricators who need a finishing partner rather than a bottleneck.
Batch and production quantities both, with expedited handling where a schedule demands it, and pickup and delivery in the Metroplex.
The sequence is the same for a first article or a scheduled release, and every step leaves a record against the job number.
| Step | What happens | What we need from you |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Order entry and tracking | Job opened against the print revision, powder product and color standard recorded | Drawing revision, quantity, color standard, any spec callout |
| 2. Surface preparation | Degrease and steam clean, media blast to profile, phosphate or equivalent conversion coating | Substrate and alloy, prior processing, any existing coating |
| 3. Masking | High-temperature tape, silicone plugs and caps, custom fixtures where geometry needs one | Surfaces that must stay clean, marked on the print |
| 4. Electrostatic application | Charged powder sprayed in a controlled booth, parts hung and grounded | Designated hanging points, or we choose them |
| 5. Cure | Batch oven or the four-stage curing oven, held to the powder manufacturer’s part-metal schedule | Any heat limit on the part or its temper |
| 6. Final inspection | Film thickness, appearance, adhesion and masked-surface check against print | Acceptance criteria and any documentation your customer requires |
Certificates of conformance, film thickness records and cure records are produced where the purchase order calls for them. The quality system they sit inside is on certifications and approvals; the full service list is on services.
Coating is a freight problem as much as a process problem. Bare fabricated steel travels badly and coated parts travel worse; every extra hour on a truck is an hour of schedule and another chance to put a handling mark in a finished surface. 5020 Grisham Drive in Rowlett sits on the northeast edge of the Metroplex, with most of it inside a same-day round trip.
Garland and Mesquite are minutes away – close enough that a fabricator can drop parts in the morning and have a first article looked at before the shift ends, and close enough that a color approval panel is worth driving over for rather than mailing. Richardson and Plano sit up the President George Bush Turnpike, which is why so much of the electronics enclosure work comes from that corridor. Dallas proper is a straight run down I-30, and Carrollton closes the northern arc.
West of the city the runs are longer but still routine. Irving and Grand Prairie feed a lot of aerospace and heavy fabrication work our way, Arlington brings automotive and heavy truck volume, and Fort Worth is a comfortable one-way haul – far enough that we consolidate loads rather than running singles, which is a conversation worth having at quote time if you ship weekly. The full map, with the plating sites included, is on service areas.
Gleco Paint & Powder Coating is the coatings division of Gleco Plating, family-owned in Texas since 1979. Powder, liquid paint, Cerakote, MIL-spec and CARC finishing, silkscreening, blasting and masking all run at Rowlett; plating, anodizing and passivation run on the plating side. More on the company and on how powder fits our environmental position.
Two ovens in Rowlett, each 8 ft high by 8 ft wide by 12 ft deep inside. The largest part we can cure sits a little under that in every direction, because it has to hang clear of the walls and floor with air moving around it. The envelope is only half the answer, though: how the part hangs, what it weighs on a hook, and how long the mass takes to reach cure temperature all decide it too – a long thin weldment and a compact casting of the same weight behave completely differently in an oven. Send the drawing with overall dimensions and part weight, tell us the quantity per release, and you will get a straight yes, a yes with a fixturing plan, or a no with a reason.
Yes. RAL and AMS-STD-595 numbers are both standard callouts and are sourced through the major powder manufacturers, including DuPont, Sherwin-Williams and Tiger-Drylac. A custom shade can also be matched from a physical sample – send the chip, the cap or the painted part, not a screen color. Two caveats worth knowing up front: matching a powder to an existing liquid color is approximate, because the pigment and resin systems differ and two coatings can agree under one light source and disagree under another, and a gloss or texture mismatch will make a correct hue look wrong. Approve a custom match on a sprayed panel at the specified gloss level.
Yes – completely, and that is usually the problem. Powder coats a thread as readily as a flat face, and at 2 to 3 mils per flank an internal thread will not take its fastener afterwards. Cured thermoset does not wipe off; it has to be chased, blasted or machined out. Call out threaded holes, bearing bores, dowel locations, sealing faces and ground paths on the print and they get plugged or taped before application, which costs almost nothing. See masking: what to call out.
A normal single coat runs about 2 to 3 mils, with the commonly quoted general window at 60 to 80 microns, or 2.4 to 3.1 thousandths of an inch. Exterior single-coat systems often run a little heavier. There is a practical ceiling as well as a floor: powder starts to repel itself electrostatically somewhere around 4 to 5 mils, and over-application shows up as poor flow-out, color shift and cracking at flex points. Uncured powder height is not the final film – it can drop by up to half during melt and flow – so film build is verified on the cured coating, not at the gun.
Yes, and it is routine, but the pretreatment is different from steel. Steel is normally handled with an iron phosphate conversion coating; aluminum takes a chromate or chrome-free conversion treatment suited to the alloy. Tell us the alloy and the prior processing. Two things to flag at RFQ: aluminum castings and any porous or galvanized surface can outgas in the oven and leave pinholes in the film, which is handled with a pre-bake or an outgas-forgiving primer; and thin aluminum needs a gentler blast media than steel does or it will distort. Anodizing before or instead of powder is a plating-side process – see glecoplating.com.
It depends entirely on the resin, and this is where most outdoor failures come from. Epoxy and epoxy-polyester hybrid powders are not outdoor durable at all – any epoxy content will chalk and degrade within a couple of months of sun exposure. Standard polyester, polyester-HAA and polyurethane grades hold color and gloss for roughly 12 to 18 months of severe South Florida exposure, and show significant fade and gloss loss by two years. Superdurable polyester and superdurable urethane grades are built for up to about five years in that same exposure, and fluoropolymer architectural powders for ten years and beyond. Pigment matters as much as resin: standard-grade organic pigments fade in 18 to 24 months whatever they are bound in, so a superdurable specification has to include the pigment class. Tell us the service environment and expected life and the grade follows from it.
Only if the whole thing tolerates the cure. The part metal has to reach roughly 350 to 400 degF and stay there for ten to twenty minutes, so seals, bearings, adhesives, wiring, batteries and most engineering plastics do not survive it. Some plastic components – bezels, housings and enclosure parts – are coated successfully, but that is confirmed part by part against the cure schedule and the substrate’s heat tolerance, never assumed. Where the assembly cannot be baked, the usual answers are coating the detail parts before assembly, or an air-dry liquid system.
Almost every adhesion failure we are asked to investigate traces back to preparation rather than to the powder. Powder has no solvent to cut through a contaminant and no dwell time to wet a dirty surface, so oil, mill scale, weld discoloration, rust or a previous coating stays exactly where it was, under a cured thermoset film. The standard route is degrease and steam clean, blast to profile, then chemical pretreatment and a conversion coating. Recoating over an unknown existing finish is the one case we will usually decline without stripping first. Detail on prep, masking and blasting.
Give us the drawing, the substrate and alloy, the surfaces that must stay clean, the color standard and where the part lives in service. You will get the resin family, the prep route and a number – or a straight answer that powder is the wrong process for it.
