Company Profile > Microcosmics At Work

Microcosmics At Work

Whitford products sell in more than fifty countries, frequently to customers who are not yet highly skilled in the application of high-performance coatings. And our business is not immune to the rule of Murphy’s Law.

So we are often called by customers with problems. They need help, and they need it fast.

Recreating the effects of salt fog on an accelerated basis is particularly useful for determining the corrosion resistance of coatings for fasteners to be exposed to the open air.

In others, we will attempt to replicate the problem in our laboratories, which are set up to be microcosms of the real world in which our customers live.

First, we subject retained samples of the coating the customer is using to a battery of tests, just to make sure the problem is not the product itself. Then, we replicate the basic conditions in the customer’s plant on our own equipment.

Whitford maintains a variety of processing equipment: metal treatment lines, etching lines, standard air spray, HVLP, electrostatic spray, powder coating facilities, roller coating, dip/spin, curtain coating, ovens, etc. This permits us to review the entire application process and pinpoint exactly where the problem is occurring — quickly and efficiently.

Pioneering processes and products

New, larger, more efficient and more environmentally friendly manufacturing techniques are an important part of Whitford's efforts to stay ahead of the competition.

Maintaining such equipment provides us with another opportunity: the enhanced ability to develop new, better, more efficient and environmentally friendly coatings.
Here are two examples:

1. New coatings for dip/spinning. Working with two manufacturers of dip/spin equipment, Whitford pioneered a new category of coatings that could be applied by the dip/spin method to be used to protect fasteners from corrosion and other abuse while resisting ultraviolet degradation. Dip/spinning is the most efficient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly method of coating small parts.

2. New fluoropolymer materials for the curtain coater. There is nothing new about curtain coating, which is essentially the passing of a moving object on a belt through a curtain of coating to provide a smooth, even finish without wasting any of the coating – waste that is common to most other methods of coating application. The coating that does not fall onto the object passing through the curtain falls through a gap in the machine, back into the circulating coating supply.

What is new is Whitford’s development of specific coatings that will perform consistently and well on the curtain coater (the result of several years of intensive work in three of our laboratories). These bring significant savings to the customer as they avoid virtually all of the overspray problems of conventional application methods.

The ability to duplicate the customer’s process — from substrate treatment through application to the final cure — accelerates and simplifies the problem-solving process.

It also leads to important developments in coatings that save money for our customers as they reduce significantly the problems of polluting the environment.