Powdercoating 81 shelves

[MoonDawg]

    Have been dissatisfied with long term results of zink plating shelves. Old customers have
come back with terrible rust and oxidation on shelves I had plated.
    Powdercoating is not as shiny but I can testify it is much more durable against temperature and scratches.
    So I included 5 sets of original shelves with my latest powdercoating order.The kid
running the shop (the owners son) returned my shelves to me sandblasted but un-coated.
He said I would have to remove the wheels because they would melt in his oven

    These wheels look to be phenolic to me....zink plating has never fazed them.
I thought powder coating was baked at 300 degrees, or am I wrong....is it higher?

    I am going to try baking one in my home oven this weekend, but..........
my question is......has anyone else had V-81 shelves powdercoated without
damaging the wheels? I don't want to remove them.
 

[Marvin]

A friend of mine had some powder coated without removing the rollers.  They held up just fine, but I did not care for how they looked.  It may depend on what temp oven your guy uses also. 

I removed the rollers when I had mine done though.  I just drilled the rviet out and ordered some "sex bolts" (they may also be called binding posts) to replace them with.  The bolt and nut screws into each other kind of like a post.  I put a drop of red loctite on each one to make sure it did not unscrew.
 

Marvin

[mznb1u]

MoonDawg,

I worked in a powder-coating factory for two summers during my college years.  Nasty business and the hardest job I ever had.  We were mainly working with automotive parts.  That was a few (alright quite a few) years ago but my recollection is that we baked the parts at 600 degrees for about 30 to 40 minutes.  Not a fun place to work in the summer; however, when you came out of the factory on 98 degree humid Michigan summer days it felt like a pretty nice day because the temps on the line were 120 plus a lot of the time.

One day they actually took the fans off of the workers and put them on the conveyor line circuit panels so they wouldn't pop the breakers from overheating.  Talk about shades of "1984"!

Tim

[sodaworks]

I believe my powdercoater cooks off @ 450 degrees F for 30 minutes.

[MoonDawg]

       Thanks all, he tested 1 shelf and I found it, confirmed  the wheel got warped. Ok I am
going to remove all the wheels prior to re-submitting to powdercoating and use Marvin's suggestion.
       But since my last post I discovered a huge error! 
       I also sent in 5 V-81 faceplates to be powdercoated white.
       Everything else was to be silver,3 inner liners, 5 sets of bottle stack plates, 5 sets of 81 shelves (which were returned until the wheels were removed) 5 sets of bottle stack
slides and a few latches and handles.  Well.....................................everything came back WHITE, only the liners were silver.
      I installed the innerliner and compressor into the Pepsi 81 I am restoring. Then I assembled the bottle stack using the white faceplate and white bottlestack plates.
Guess what, I am happy so far. 
      Now my question here is for a group opinion:  do I have them re-sandblast all the white shelfslides, then powdercoat them, and the all the shelves silver as original and as requested.........or continue with this all white theme? I know it's not original, but do y'all think white shelves would look funky? I am neutral right now 

[SIGNGUY]

HMMM... It doesn't look all that bad with the shelves white, but I dont' think the bottle slides would look good white if the bottle shelves will be done in Silver?

I personally would ask to get them redone like ordered for no additional charge?

[MoonDawg]

   No the bottle stack plates are white, and so are the slides. Just wondering if the shelves should now be white or silver ? If silver I will need to change the slides back from white to to silver.

[Eric]

Silver.... Go original... that's what you ask for... he should honor that.
anyway.... that's my vote 

[collecture]

I know you already assembled the stack, but I would have made them redo everything as originally ordered. I'm partial to things looking original!
Then again - ask the customer what they prefer! They may not care one way or the other.

[SIGNGUY]

Regarding the "Sex Bolts" , what size did you use that worked, and where did you get them. I might try that route as well.

Thanks
John

A friend of mine had some powder coated without removing the rollers.  They held up just fine, but I did not care for how they looked.  It may depend on what temp oven your guy uses also. 

I removed the rollers when I had mine done though.  I just drilled the rviet out and ordered some "sex bolts" (they may also be called binding posts) to replace them with.  The bolt and nut screws into each other kind of like a post.  I put a drop of red loctite on each one to make sure it did not unscrew.
 

Marvin