What began as a small body shop in the late
1970s is now a 40,000 square-foot metal
fabricating and powder coating business that
caters to, among others, ironwork customers.
Read about how this company brought a once outsourced
environmentally friendly finishing
process in house and made powder coating
for others a part of its business.
By Paul Mills
Francis “PJ” Bell has been
a metal fabricator for 40
years. Although PJ says he’s
“semi-retired,” you can still find
him on the production floor at PJ’s
Fabricating Inc. (PJ’s) almost every
day, working with employees
and managers—many of whom
are family members and long-time
colleagues. What began in 1977 as
a small body shop in Canton, Ohio,
is now a bustling 40,000 square
foot metal fabricating and powder
coating business that engineers,
fabricates and finishes products from
complicated electronics bracketry
to decorative ironwork for fireplace
doors. Until 2000, PJ’s outsourced
the powder coating of their fabricated
parts to a local custom coater.
“We switched to in-house painting
to reduce our own delivery times.
Now powder coating is a big part of
what we offer to others,” explains
Bell. “Today we have both customers
who use us to powder coat parts
they make themselves as well as customers that we do fabrication and
powder coating for.”
Nearby Thermo-Rite is a fireplace
enclosure manufacturer that works
with PJ’s for both its fabrication and
powder coating expertise. “Powder
coating provides a lot of benefits
for their enclosures,” says Brandy
Moore, PJ’s powder coat manager.
She is also PJ’s daughter, so she has grown up in the business. “Powder
provides the performance that lets
Thermo-Rite make good on their
claim of ‘uncompromising commitment
to quality,’” says Moore, “but
powder also provides them with a
palette of 15 colors that provide the
natural rustic look and patina of
iron. And the metallic powder coatings
we apply also have a tactile feel of naturally textured materials.”
“The colors and textures are
amazing,” says Bruce Mencer,
business development manager for
industrial coatings at D&S Color
Supply. D&S, a PPG platinum distributor
works closely with Moore
to develop the look and feel of high
quality ironwork. “Fireplace customers
can choose from colors like
natural iron, old iron, moss iron
or bronze iron. Powder has been
a game changer for the decorative
ironwork industry,” says Mencer.
“The improvements in color, texture
and performance in the past few years has caused a shift in finishing
from liquid epoxy primers and
urethane top coats to these kinds of
durable, corrosion resistant powder
coatings” he says.
Moore has seen this shift to powder
coating by other ironwork customers
like Adjusta-Post, a nearby
manufacturer of decorative outdoor
lighting products. “Powder gives
their posts, brackets, and finials a
curb appeal and outdoor weatherability
without all the permitting
problems of spraying liquid paints in
Ohio,” she explains.
The same benefits of have led to
more business from manufacturers
in other areas as well. For example,
the Gasser Chair Company in
nearby Youngstown, Ohio, which
makes chairs for large hotels, cruise
ships and casinos around the world.
“Gasser liked the look and performance
of powder so much that they
stopped anodizing a lot of their aluminum and switched to powder
coating,” says Bell.
“Powder coating aluminum
requires a more complicated pretreatment,”
explains Steve Moore,
Brandy’s husband and the powder
coat production foreman. “So we
run a five-stage chemical pretreatment
system to handle a wide range
of incoming metals including all
kinds of steel and aluminum.” PJ’s
has worked with their pretreatment
chemistry supplier, Curtis Chemical, since they began powder coating.
Parts are first cleaned with a heated
alkaline wash followed by a second
stage water rinse. Then, a heated
iron phosphate wash is again followed
by a fresh water rinse. Finally,
a non-chrome sealer is applied to
prevent flash rust. Automated pumps
for make-up water and programmed
dispensing of pretreatment chemicals
assure that the pretreatment
system is continuously operating
within specification. Following pretreatment, clean parts are dried in
a gas catalytic infrared oven prior to
being powder coating.
Not surprisingly, the powder
coating booth is a customized downdraft
spray-to-waste design. “I guess
our ability to design, engineer and
fabricate stuff gives us an edge when
it comes to tailoring equipment to
best fit our needs” says Moore. Two
manual spray stations featuring
Gema Optiflex hand guns and programmable
controllers are used to powder coat parts. “Since we apply a
lot of metallic and textured powders
that cannot easily be re-sprayed, we
don’t reclaim them” explains Moore.
“We find that with a comfortable line
speed, good application equipment
and experienced painters we can
maintain high first pass transfer efficiency
without the hassle and risks
of collecting and recycling powder.”
Another factor Moore attributes
to their high quality and efficiency
is that PJ’s designs and fabricates all
of their own part racks, hooks and
hangers in order to achieve optimal
racking density and part presentation
for powder coating. The fixtures
are all designed and built in-house
and are cleaned using high-temperature
burn off.
Following powder coating, parts
are cured in a second gas catalytic
infrared oven supplied by CCI Thermal
Technologies of Edmonton, AB.
The parts typically reach a peak metal
temperature of 400°F and dwell
for about 10 minutes before they
move through an ambient cool-down
station. The entire powder coat system
is organized around a 310-foot
monorail conveyor which typically
operates between 1.0 and 3.0 feet per
minute and can accommodate parts
sizes up to 2 feet wide, 4 feet high
and 12 feet long.
Attention to powder storage and
handling is critical to PJ’s operation.
“Several of our customers rely on
specialty powders to achieve a specific metallic look or texture that can
change if the powder isn’t handled
consistently,” says Brandy Moore.
“We have to make sure nothing
changes—the settings, the parts, the
operators, or the powder.” To do
this, PJ’s uses a first-in-first-out system
to manage their powder inventory,
and uses vibratory box feeders on their powder dispensing systems.
And to assure consistency, they
condition their powder as though
it is fine wine. The temperatures in
Ohio go well above a hundred and
well below zero, says Moore, so PJ’s
installed a 500-square foot powder
storage facility with humidity and
temperature control designed and built by G&W Building. Although
they control the process to assure
consistency, PJ’s leaves nothing to
chance, and monitors quality as
parts come off the powder line for
adhesion, cure, color, gloss and film
thickness through a series of quality
control checks and tests before applying
the “Powder Coated Tough”
sticker to every box. This kind of
sharp focus on quality has helped
PJ’s attain the ISO-9001, ISO-14001
and TS-16949 quality certifications
needed to be a quality tier supplier
to automotive.
Tough is also a good way to
describe the fabrication side of PJ’s
business. As fabrication production
manager, Kevin Hudson oversees
fabrication operations. “We have two
Mitsubishi CO2 laser cutting systems
that can cut material up to one inch
thick. Our 230- and 130-ton Cincinnati
forming machines can bend half
inch thick metal up to 5 feet wide,
and we can roll steel up to a quarter
inch” explains Hudson. Along with a Trumpf CNC punch press, brakes,
benders, shears, lathes and other
forming and fabricating machinery
the operation can make parts from
hot and cold rolled steel, stainless,
galvanized and aluminum. AWS
D1.1 certified welders are skilled in
nearly every kind of welding process
from GMAW to Mig to Tig. “We
can design, build and coat almost
anything our customers ask us for,”
says Bell.
And to accommodate those
customers, in 2005 PJ’s added a
warehouse and storage facility for
customers who need just-in-time
delivery for their parts. “Storage
capacity allows us to keep our costs
down, and our quality high for these
customers by running a high volume
in production and then releasing
product to our customers as they
need it,” explains Bell.
Brandy Moore sees a bright and
colorful future for powder coating
at PJ’s. “It seems like the more
interesting work we do, the more our customers are open to looking
at ‘fun stuff’ with powder,” she
explains. This has drawn Moore
and the PJ’s team closer to suppliers
like D&S Color Supply. “You can
buy paint anywhere,” says Mencer,
“but working together to come up
with new looks and textures and to
provide real customer service is what
we find leads to loyal customers for
everyone.”
Paul Mills is a marketing and business
development consultant to industry
chemistry and equipment suppliers. He
has been a writer for the powder coating
industry since 1994.
By Paul Mills
Reach Paul at 440-570-5228 or via email at pmillsoh@aol.com