Scratch resistance of ‘fast-cured’ metal flake powder coatings

The economy of high quality metal flakes powder coatings process is remarkably influenced by the curing procedure involving two cost and time consuming steps in convective oven. Significant savings can be achieved accelerating the baking process by IR pre-curing the outermost layers of the basecoat and following this with a conventional oven-baking of the whole coating system. In the present investigation, the IR pre-curing process of the basecoat was analyzed by studying the influence of the IR radiation intensity and exposure time on the adhesion strength and scratch resistance of the coating varying the contact load of the scratching indenter.