Expansion of Powder Coating Tank & Process Capacity Optimizes Production, Cost, and Quality

Recently, Storm Power expanded our fluidized powder coating tank capacity to provide additional benefits to our customers, including streamlining production, reducing costs, and improving quality.

The process enhancements were driven by the following factors:

• Market Requirements for Larger Busbars: The continuing evolution of new application requirements in markets such as power utilities, communications, electric vehicles, transportation and others, is driving new demands for larger, longer and more complex busbars.
• Quality Issues with Using Pre-Plated Copper Stock: To address these needs, some customers have tried using pre-plated copper stock. However, there are issues with lack of choice regarding specific coating thicknesses and also the need to spot coat areas where holes or slots are cut in pre-plated stock.
• Improve Logistics for Customers: In addition, customers have run into long lead-times and other logistics issues when ordering pre-plated copper stock.
• Shortcomings of Secondary Processes for “Double Dipping”: While the alternative of dipping portions of a large busbar in multiple passes is feasible, it is both costly in terms of labor for multiple processes and can have quality issues for matching the thickness and coverage where segments meet.

Benefits include:

• Enabling a rapid, single-pass, fluidized coating process
• Eliminating secondary processes such as multiple coating passes and/or spot coating around holes or slots.
• Leveraging Storm’s position as a huge buyer of copper stock, which enables better pricing than pre-coated copper and faster logistics from order to delivery.
• Allowing customers to specify any required coating thickness rather than having to chose from a limited set of pre-plated options

Storm’s investment in large capacity fluidized powder coating enables our customers to have it all, with higher quality, reduced overall costs, and faster time-to-market.

Read more in the App Note on Storm's Powder Coating Process Expansion