Powder Coat Part 8: Ovens

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There are many different ways to go here. Ideally what you want is:

> A dedicated oven. You can never use your powder coat oven for food ever again.
> The oven needs to be able to reach temperatures of at least 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
> It must be electric. Do not use a gas oven as the fumes given off by curing powder are flammable.
> Preferably a convection oven, as you get a more even heat and the objects in the oven come up to temperature quicker. An important point to remember is that cure temperature is not the temperature of the air in the oven, but the temperature of the object being powder coated.
> The oven should be vented to the outside as the fumes from curing powder are both flammable and unhealthy to breathe.
> Side opening doors so you can walk right up to it with parts. You do not want to try to handle parts over a door hanging in front of the oven.
> About the same size as your blasting cabinet.

Where to get your Oven?
This is truly a wide open question. I continue to hear inventive answers.

I would say this is the very low road and is really nothing more than a toaster oven. It is sold by Eastwood and, in my opinion, is really too small to do anything with. They are charging $99.99 for it. Do not even consider it unless powder coating jewelry.

I have heard that a lot of people have started out using an old kitchen oven. This is an inexpensive way to start as you can usually get an old kitchen oven for free. A kitchen oven limits the size of parts you can do. You need to be able to get the part in and out of the oven without bumping the part. I do not know if it is possible but if it could be turned on its side it would be a much more useful oven, I have done a little research on this and it suggests that this is possible. The heating elements would have to be secured in place. If mounted on a stand it would get the oven to chest height and, finally, the door would open to the side.

The way I went was to look for a used oven on Fee-Bay.  Since then, I have discovered that going out of business restaurant auctions are another good place to look for a good size used oven. I found pretty much exactly what I was looking for, although a larger oven would make getting parts in and out a little easier. One thought here is, if it had been any larger, it would not have fit through my house door openings. On the other hand, it is not much smaller than my blasting cabinet, so they are a good match. 

The oven was a used laboratory oven. The temperature controller was in Celsius.  I converted it to Fahrenheit.

If you look closely, you can see that it is a vented oven. This means no fumes in the shop. 

The doors open to the side so I can walk right up to the open oven. Certainly a lot easier than trying to hang parts with the oven door sticking out from the front of the oven. By moving the rack all the way to the top of the oven, it provides lots of places to hang parts. Hanging parts seems to be the best way to minimize damage for to the finished powder coat surface. If you set the piece on a rack, it will mar the final finish.

It has more controls that what I need and the plan is to simplify them at some point. That will probably happen when it breaks. There is an oven temperature warning alarm and light and timer with a light.

It is a convection oven with an adjustable air flow which is nice. It allows me to adjust the air flow as high as possible without blowing the uncured powder off the objects being powder coated. 

The oven certainly can get hot enough with a 325 degree Celsius rating.  That converts to 617 degrees  Fahrenheit.

The absolute cheapest way to get a large powder coating oven is to build one yourself. It really is not that hard or complicated. There are many guides out on the internet on how to do this and may be something I pursue. This is a link to one such guide: http://www.powdercoatguide.com/2014/09/how-to-build-powder-coating-oven.html#.WDSrPlxG5B5. I make no recommendations on this article.  It is just something I came across. I have a friend that is currently building one of his own and doing an excellent job. I will ask him to produce a step by step and add his link here in place of the one I have now.

And of course, you have the top of the line room size ovens that are out of my reach.