Powder coating. Alien concept to me. (Seriously. Why not just spray paint them?)
Powder coating is a baked on plastic enamel, so it's harder and resists solvents, acid, age.
I've been temped to get a powder coating setup at times.
I haven't seen much before this about the E10 tractor, my parents have an E12, E15, and an E20.
Powder coating. Alien concept to me. (Seriously. Why not just spray paint them?)
Powdercoating is much more eco than spray paint. No nasty polluting solvents and it lasts longer. The commercial set ups use static electricity to get the powder to cling to the steel before heat soaking.
Enamel is the old school coating for appliances and it is actually powdered glass melted on to steel. As Christ pointed out glazing on pottery and porcelain is also a type of powdered glass.
Enamel used to describe paint is more or less a marketing term to try to attribute to it the shiny hard durable permanence of real enamel.
Not my question, but AFAIK, that's how they all work... powder is positive ion, item is grounded to chassis (negative ion) and they get a friction bond from static.
There are a couple of leads on the powder-coat unit.
One goes to the gun, one goes to a ground clip, and one goes to a foot pedal.
When the pedal is pressed, it charges the gun and the ground clip negative and positive. That clip was connected to the metal wire that we hung the pieces from.
So what happens when you TOUCH a positive gun to a negative-grounded hunk of metal? Pretty much the same thing that happens in your car when you touch positive to the frame!
OK, not quite the same - it's more of a high-voltage/low amperage kind of a spark. Much more like a really bad shock from walking across carpet in the winter and touching the light switch ground screw.
Still, it scared the heck out of me.
The air pressure wasn't real well regulated, so I was holding the gun kinda close. I think I jumped every time I made a spark. Tim was laughing at me....
Also, my friend Tom, master of salvage, doug up a couple of riding mower transmissions at his friends scrap yard.
No, they won't stock replace the one I have on the Electrac, but the tires are the right size. (Although I already bought NEW tires a while back! Where's my reciept?!?!)
Also, the one had bolt on rims and used HUB ADAPTERS! Too bad they aren't for a one-inch driveshaft! They were only three-quarters. The guys seem to be encouraging me to get some 1" ID pipe and MAKE them into 1" hub adapters!
Hmmm. More experience with the bandsaw, lathe, and welder. I think I might give it a try.
If I do that, I think I will also sandblast the matching rims, and beg Tim again for additional powder-coating!
The other interesting/weird thing about it is that the hub is for three bolts, and the rim is for five!
The 3-bolt thing is pretty common, I've only got 2 sets that actually have all 5 bolts. Howeer, since I've been using them for so long, I can pretty much manufacture them by eye at this point if I ever run out.
I use the 3 bolt ones on random projects, and to test fit wheels after lowering axles under racers, for mock-ups. I never put the 3 bolt hub plates on anything that has more than about 40 HP, or goes faster than 35-40 MPH or will see hard cornering.
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