Paint and coatings are some of the most regulated areas in manufacturing due to their flammability, potential exposure health risks to employees, and release of VOCs into the environment. These factors alone can cause plenty of headaches for manufacturers, but they’re just some of the reasons NCCA works so hard to promote the coil coating industry.

When plant managers or engineers first start thinking about converting to prepainted metal, they usually don’t realize the totality of benefits they will enjoy, and all of the burdens they will be removing from their plant and their minds.

Often manufacturers are considering prepaint because they are concerned about needing additional space on the factory floor, or the need to enhance the quality of their finishes. Or, they may have a new product line and just not enough plant capacity for additional in-house painting. However, once they start getting into the details of the conversion process, these manufacturers see even more possibilities.

When you outsource your product painting to a coil coater, you are streamlining your processes significantly. When prepainted metal is introduced, the factory often begins running in a continuous workflow rather than in a batch processing method. This is because with prepainted metal, the cleaning, priming, painting and curing steps are eliminated from the plant. These time-consuming steps are often the ones that cause backups and delays. With prepainted metal, your plant often becomes more predictable because a number of steps are taken away.

In addition, environmental compliance issues and the associated paperwork and reporting requirements are reduced significantly when paint and coatings are moved out of the factory. By converting to prepaint, the coil coater now is the one responsible for cleanup, meeting new environmental requirements, and reporting to the EPA.

Coil coating is without question the most efficient and environmentally friendly painting process available today. Rather than painting piece by piece at your plant, the metal will be cleaned, primed and painted in a continuous, coil-to-coil process in the exact color, textures and specialty coatings desired.

Because of this, surface quality concerns are also reduced with coil coated metal. When paint is applied on the coil, it is more evenly distributed from edge to edge and is tightly adhered to the metal. A coil coated surface is also cleaned and treated more thoroughly, since the substrate is treated in its flat state, resulting in a higher quality finish and a more consistent product.

When using prepainted metal, the coil coater provides all the materials, cleanup and manpower otherwise needed by an in-house painting process. That’s a lot of headaches, hassles, and costs that are removed.

If you’re ready to look further into converting to coated coil, search for a supplier that will meet your needs.