How Using Heat in Your Finishing Process Can Significantly Improve Finish Quality, Help Reduce Emissions, and Save on Thinner Costs

Heat has significant benefits when utilized in your finishing process. In particular, heat helps highly viscous coatings flow easier. As your coating is able to flow with greater ease, it also allows for better atomization of your coating. This provides a finer finish. Additionally, heat allows for thinning of paint without use of thinner, which is an additional ongoing expense as well as a source of emissions. These benefits of reduced ongoing thinner expenses, potentially reduced emissions, and improved finish are significant benefits and below we discuss some of the most likely situations where these benefits are most helpful.

• You have to watch your emissions – With solvent based coatings if you are limited on your VOC emissions due to regulation heat can be a great solution; you can heat your coating and not add any solvent keeping your emissions down but still getting the benefit of a fine finish that can be difficult to achieve with a thicker coating.
• Your coating is fed from a large source – if you are feeding a finishing line from a large container like a 55 gallon drum you can either add solvent from a separate source or utilize a heated system to reduce coating viscosity.  The second choice is typically preferable where feasible as with large volumes of coating use there is a greater likelihood of needing to watch emissions.
• Your coating is not supposed to be or not recommended to be thinned with thinner – in certain circumstances your coating manufacturer may recommend not thinning your coating with a thinner. If this is your situation heat can be a good alternative to thin your coating so that you can provide a fine finish or so that you can have your material flow so it can be sprayed

With these sort of situations in mind have you ever used heat in your finishing process?  What was your experience with adding heat to your finishing process and what were the benefits and drawbacks you experienced?