Six Crucial Stages of a Heavy Equipment Paint Process

Paint is an important aspect of equipment maintenance. If your heavy equipment has started looking dull and dark with paint scraping off it, it's time you get it repainted. For that, you require calling a heavy equipment paint professional. The expert will assess your equipment for repair and replacements before beginning the painting process. However, many other things go into the heavy equipment process. In this article, we are going to highlight each of those.

1: Preparation: Before beginning to paint, it is important to remove the old paint, decals, dirt, and corrosion. Specialists generally use a knife or spray to do this and sometimes even perform sandblasting services. They also look for dents and remove them using a filler. All of this is to ensure the paint surface is smooth. Then, they remove all the loose parts and put masking tape on those that cannot be removed.

2: Proper Protection: After preparing the equipment, the heavy equipment paint professionals prepare to protect themselves. They wear a spray coverall and gloves along with a gas mask to prevent solvent inhaling.

Once they are all set, they start preparing the floor and walls by using cardboard or plastic sheeting. As the painting takes place on-site, make sure you have a nice ventilation system that can help with the effective extraction of paint vapours and mists. 

3: Paint Selection: Making the right paint choice is vital. If you ask specialists, they will tell you they consider several factors before choosing the paint. This includes paint composition, price, total quantity, application method, analysing the need for a thinner, primer and more.

Each factor has its role to play. For instance, one needs two kinds of paint if they use both spraying as well as brushing as paint application methods. Similarly, some parts may require component 1 paint type and others may require component 2 type. All these needs are thoroughly assessed by experts before purchasing the paint.   

4: Painting Begins: Hiring an experienced team gives you peace of mind that the paint job will be completed on time. Professionals in the field hold their spray guns from the required distance and use the easy top to bottom and side to side movements to spray paint equipment. The process is pretty much the same for heavy-duty equipment and vehicles with volumetric mixer parts. To ensure better adhesion and viscosity, keep an eye on the temperature; it should be around 20°C.

5 Dry Time: A single layer of paint is never enough. Thus, experts apply at least two layers of paint on equipment and vehicles. The need for the third layer comes when the second one doesn't display expected results or the client specifically asks for it.

They observe a dry time of around 7 to 10 minutes between the application of these layers depending on the size of equipment. When all the layers are complete, they suggest leaving the equipment as it is for a day. This is because factors such as ventilation, temperature, and layer thickness can affect drying speed.

6: Decals and Labels: Once the paint job is complete, the paint experts use necessary decals, stickers and labels for the equipment. And since they do the paint job for a living, they know which labels and decals comply with the legislation. However, make sure you ask if the ones they are using have good adhesion and resistance against water and UV or not. Additionally, if you have special requirements with regards to warning labels and instructions, just let them know in advance.

So, this was a gist of what a heavy equipment paint process includes. Knowing this will help you inspect if the professionals you hired are doing a good job. 

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Created on Jul 27th 2021 02:14. Viewed 344 times.

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