POWDER COATING

“RE-SETTING” THE STANDARD WITH MILRON’S TECHNOLOGY

“Be uncommon”, these are words we aim to live by at Milron. Why should we do anything the way it was done before? Or the way someone else does it? How can we be innovative if we lack the courage to change?

Milron provides outstanding service to our customers through engaging our team in a safe environment with great environment and great processes. This is done through repeat-ability “every day, each time without fail, no exceptions!” Without our passionate, service-oriented team, we would not be able to push the entire industry to the next level.

When we say “Re-Setting” The Standard, the team at Milron means it!

This involves “Re-Setting” the industry in 6 key areas:

Safety, Quality, Materials, Experience, Innovation, and Technology

POWDER COATING

The team at Milron decided that the best way to maintain the highest quality in each product we build would be to have our powder coat facility that would be one of the best in Western Canada.

We reached out to Tiger-Drylac and had their reps spec a powder system for us from scratch, designed to coat our products and have the highest level of durability available in the world. The team at Tiger-Drylac started us on the road to success in powder coating and a new division and team at Milron was assembled.

After adding a new team leader Ryan Griffith with 20 years of powder coating experience to our Milron team, we partnered him with our Tiger-Drylac representative and sent them the journey to build us the best powder operation to meet our goals.

Our powder coat goal, which we are close to completing is to become one of 4 certified Tiger-Drylac powder paint facilities in Western Canada. We will have a certified process (spring of 2020, COVID 19 delay) once the quality control expert from Tiger-Drylac comes to operate and certify our system has been operating to their quality level.

Milron performs all necessary quality measures through third party test labs to ensure to objective determinations are made. Furthermore our in-house lab has the standard industry test equipment including crosshatch, pull tape, one hour boil test, and low voltage pinhole detection (LPD) and mil thickness dictators. Test subjects are documented and cataloged for five years.

“Re-Setting” the standard in the industry is important to our team and to ensure we deliver the highest quality service bodies with the highest quality powder coat to our customers.

Each body is sanded properly with 2 types of grit sandpaper 80, and 180. Variances are checked and watched closely in our welding department. The hand sanding takes time but produces the best mechanical bond for the paint to adhere to.

Bodies are then delivered to our chemical wash station. A special reverse-osmosis system is the start of our wash process. The water we use to wash has a controlled PH level and this is very important to prevent scaling and hard water build-up at the pre-wash.

First, we use 3 different stages of wash to ensure the mechanical bond through hand sanding, works very aggressively with Bonderrite coversion coating that allows the highest level of powder metal cross link.

Second, each body is placed in our first oven that is 1,500,000 BTU’s and 17.5’ long by 10’ wide by 10’ high to aggressively dry off and open the pores in the aluminum.

The third step, parts are rolled into our GFS application booth equipped with the latest Gemma powder coat guns. We pre coat certain parts of the body when it is hot to give the extra coverage ensuring our high-quality standard. Then we start spraying the product out completely for full coverage with our Tiger-Drylac architectural 38 series powder coating. This is the most expensive and highest quality powder offered by Tiger-Drylac, intended for architectural outdoor long life in all weather and UV conditions.

In the fourth step, the parts are rolled into our 2million BTU bake oven equipped with heat and air velocity management software. This allows the Tiger-Drylac powder coating to bake properly in accordance to Tiger’s technical data sheet.

In the fifth step, our team completes the removal from the oven into our cool down inside our building, where parts are protected from other potential contamination elements. Then a final inspection is performed on each product to again ensure quality is held.

The powder coat team at Milron is a very special part of our team, ensuring our product has a great looking, automotive finish with very little orange peel, that is durable for many years to come.

The best story we can share with you is from our liquid paint supplier, who was standing in the final assembly area between 10 bodies being final prepped. He asked us “Where are you guys buying your paint these days?” Our paint rep, who has been in the business over 25 years is of great knowledge and a great guy, we will withhold his name, for now, Ryan replied: “We are not painting our bodies with liquid paint anymore.” He said, “These are powder coat finish?” He was blown away as he said: “I’ve never seen a finish like this from powder coat, I thought they were all liquid paint!”

Once again Milron was “Re-Setting” the standard, our quality was confirmed! We had a paint supplier with 20 years’ experience who couldn’t tell the difference between automotive paint vs our powder coat.

We are an Authorized and Certified Tiger Drylac Powder Coating Facility