Powder Coating Oven Prices and Why They Vary
As a powder coater, one of your largest potential investments is often your powder coating oven. Your powder coating oven is key as it allows you to cure your powder coating and is critical to ensure you can keep up with the production needs of your powder coating business. One common question that we are asked when someone is considering a powder coating oven is what a typical powder coating oven price is and why their can seem to be so much variance in oven pricing. Will cover price ranges of powder coating ovens first then discuss why they can vary so much depending on where you purchase a powder coating oven.
Powder Coating Oven Price Ranges
Powder coating ovens will vary a lot based on the size of the oven and the manufacturer of the powder coating oven. Low-cost ovens can start at $11,000 dollars for a 6 w x 6 t x 6 d oven while an industrial designed oven of that same size can often cost $29,000. With such a variance in price, you may wonder what difference exists between the two ovens, will provide insight into the price differences now.
Why Prices Vary so Much on Powder Coating Ovens
One of the biggest variations in powder coating oven costs is the overall design of the oven. Powder coating contains solvents and as a result ovens for powder coating are suppose to meet NFPA 86 for code compliance, NFPA 86 is the fire safety code that applies to drying and curing for powder coating. To be compliant with NFPA, your powder coating oven should meet the requirements of a Class A oven, which are the oven requirements set forth for curing materials that contain flammable substances like solvents. Many times the low cost ovens will not have all the required safety or design features to be listed as a class A oven. Specific ways that a low cost oven may not meet the Class A oven requirements generally involve not having proper explosion relief panels in their design and not being properly designed to keep and control potential flammable vapor concentration below the flammable vapor concentration. Keeping flammable vapors below acceptable limits requires an oven to allow proper air into the oven and proper air to be exhausted from the oven. The reason it can be important to meet NFPA 86 is because it is the fire code that inspectors typically will want to ensure is met prior to occupancy or prior to beginning operation of your powder coating operation, you can always check with your fire marshal with any equipment your considering to see if they will approve the equipment.
Additional factors that can cause price differences in powder coating ovens include whether they are single or double skin design, the quality of the oven components, and overall controls that are included. Higher priced ovens will often have options to control whether the oven processes products in batches or continuous production and will control oven components to ensure they operate at consistent temperatures and operate within code requirements.
Ultimately powder coating oven prices can range significantly due to whether they are designed to meet federal codes and are designed to meet Class A oven requirements, which is what is recommended for curing powder coating. Which type of oven will be best will depend on your particular situation.