The Technology for Coating Underhood and Underbody Components to Improve Corrosion Resistance and to Achieve Other Desirable Benefits

This paper will deal with the demand by the automotive industry and other industries for improved performance of coatings to be applied to such components as starter motors, filters, brake drums, shock absorbers, engine blocks, etc. This requirement has placed a great demand on the coating formulator and the paint systems engineer.

It has been necessary for these two industries to package a painting system that will not only satisfy the automotive industry demands but will allow economical production rates to be achieved regardless of whether these products are heat sensitive, fully assembled or heat sink type of components.

The manufacturing engineer with the responsibility to commission a new painting facility realizes that to achieve a suitable coating to satisfy this new performance criteria it would be necessary (in most cases) to change to a fully cross-linked polymer either forced cured with heat or long extended cure times by traditional catalyzing methods. Both of these methods placed upon the engineer unacceptable burdens of slow production times, space utilization, damage to heat sensitive substrates or fully assembled components and long cool down times for heat sink-type components. These problems can be overcome by curing or fully cross-linking the polymer by a low temperature (75°F-90°F) process known as Vapocuring. The Vapocuring process lowers the energy threshold for a reaction to take place by exposing the newly coated product to a catalyst that has been disolved in an air stream.