How to: DIY powder coating

This will be a brief introduction to DIY powder coating. I would like to present you all the tools you will need and a step-by-step process of how I do it.

I got interested in powder coating and doing it on my own because most companies didn’t match my quality standards when it came to painting the steel plates for my CNC machine IndyMill. After a quick research, the idea of doing it on my own was born. I bought a cheap powder coating gun and used an old oven I used to have in my kitchen and achieved very decent results. Having full control over the painting process and handling the plates resulted in a higher quality of the painting job.

Why is powder coating better than conventional painting? It’s not as messy, toxic, or time-consuming and in the end results in a more robust surface finish. To powder coat you use a dry powder, it’s easy to clean, and even after applying it stays dry and doesn’t adhere to any surfaces (it needs to be heated to form a solid bond with the part). Because there are no solvents in the powder it’s way less toxic (but still safety is very important, wearing a proper mask, the powder is composed of super tiny particles that you really don’t want to breathe in, more about safety down below). Why is it quicker? Because you don’t need to wait for the paint to dry. 10-20 minutes in the oven and after cooling down the part is ready, no need to wait multiple hours until the paint is fully dry. Powder coating is usually more robust and harder than standard paints. As you can see it has many advantages but still is easy enough to do it in your own garage.

What you will need?

Powder coating may sound like you need a lot of expensive tools but don’t worry it’s not that bad. Here is a list of parts that are needed to start your powder coating journey:

  • Air compressor

The compressor I use is very old and still works fine. Perfectly you would use an oilless compressor for that but even with an oil one, it’s possible to powder coat with decent results. The bigger it is the better as it doesn’t need to turn on so often.

  • Oven

Do not use your oven at home! That is the most important part. You don’t want to cook food and powder coat paint in the same place. Buy an old oven or use the old one that is not in your kitchen anymore (that’s what I did). You can even buy something small like this one. And it will work fine for small parts.

  • Powder coating gun

There are plenty of expansive solutions for industry and just a few in the budget-friendly range. I found one that was very inexpensive and interestingly it is 3D printed. Because it has been working for me so well I ordered some more and now you can buy it in my store:

There are also additional empty containers available which are very useful if you want to paint multiple colors. I have been using the very same powder coating gun since I started to do it and it still works well, I have never faced a single problem, it’s easy to clean and also very durable. There are two different versions with US and EU plug. It’s a tribo-type powder coating gun so it needs to be grounded that’s why the plug has plastic pins.

  • Powder paint

It’s surprisingly inexpensive and there are all the possible colors from RAL available. Make sure that the powder paint works with the type of powder coating gun you have (tribo or corona). Usually, this paint works with any type of system but sometimes it is meant for only one of these. You can even find some powder paint on Amazon but I recommend finding something locally as it is way less expensive.

  • Hooks

I do recommend buying some solid steel hooks as it makes sit much easier to work with then DIY some hooks out of crappy materials on your own. These are so inexpensive and you can find many different versions that it’s just not worth it to make them on your own. For example, here you can find some.

  • Powder coating booth

While there are some options to buy a small booth for painting there is nothing cheap and small meant for powder coating. I built it on my own and it worked great. I am showing the build process in the video and below you can download the blueprints used for the build with all the dimensions for free to download.

Safety

Powder paint is composed of very tiny particles, particles that you definitely don’t want to inhale or get in your eyes this stuff is dangerous. When you powder coat even with really good filters, fans, and ventilation system there will always be a lot of particles flying around. That’s why you should always wear a proper respirator and eye protection. Also doing it without any fans and filters is not a good idea as these tiny particles if not filtered out of the air will fall and cover everything around your workshop. Having a separate room for that is a very good option. The respirator is something you should have in your workshop anyway, whenever you are cutting wood or steel it all results in tiny particles flying around you and getting into your lungs. If you are a maker and you like to make stuff take care of your health and safety so that you will be able to make more stuff in your life.

The mask I am using from 3M is very high quality and in my opinion, it’s a must-have in any workshop. Filters last 6 months, it’s very comfortable and will protect you not only while powder coating but also while cutting wood, etc. Considering the quality of it it’s surprisingly inexpensive.

Don’t be afraid and make it stop you from trying powder coating, it’s not as scary as it may sound. In fact, it is less toxic than normal spray painting. Just remember about a good mask and proper filtering.

DIY Powder coating booth

The booth was designed in Fusion360 and made mostly by hand out of MDF. I highly recommend building the booth out of plywood, MDF is really not the best choice.

There are three in my opinion super important parts of any powder coating booth.

  • Filtering system
  • Light
  • Rotating system

To build the filtering system I designed my own box fan that was 3d printed and used cheap BLDC motors. Unfortunately in Europe, box fans are not popular and in Poland, it’s impossible to buy a box fan. So making these on my own was the only choice for me. If you have access to box fans just buy something inexpensive.

You can use cheap LED strips to make very good light for your booth. I used the waterproof version of the LED strips but I don’t think it is necessary. With a simple plastic bracket bought in a hardware store, these were attached to the booth.

Rotating system was simply 3D printed. Additional big bearing and some wooden sticks resulted in a perfect little carousel for painting the parts and rotating them around. The bearing was used not only to rotate the part but also for grounding the part while painting.

Here you can download the blueprints for the booth:

You can see the full build process of the booth in the video linked at the beginning of this article.

At the end, I would to show you my old booth which was a 2-hour build out of pallet wood. It worked well for over a year! Warning, it’s ugly 🙂

Painting from start to finish

A step-by-step process of powder coating:

  1. Cleaning the parts

    I usually sand all the parts with a vibrating sander and then clean them with a paper towel. This works well for powder coating in my case. If you want, you can also use some chemicals to clean the parts and remove any oil or stuff on them. I mostly paint newly laser-cut steel or smooth aluminum parts, so I don’t have to do much. But if you’re painting old parts, you might need to spend more time cleaning and getting them ready for painting.
  2. Preheating (optional):
    It’s not a must, but sometimes I like to heat up my parts in the oven before painting. This makes the paint stick better, and I can finish painting faster. It’s a handy trick, especially if you have a bunch of parts to paint – saves a good amount of time. It could also be useful for tricky-to-paint parts. I haven’t tested it with nonconductive parts, but who knows, it might work for them too!
  3. Powder coating
    Set the air compressor pressure low, just a bit over 1 bar is good. Pour the powder paint into the container and begin gently applying a thin layer on the part. Aim for an even coat to get a smooth surface without any bumps or gaps. Make sure the entire part is covered in the color powder you’ve chosen; you shouldn’t see the part’s surface at the end. I usually start with the edges and holes, saving the larger areas for last.

    A great thing about powder coating (if you didn’t heat your part) is that if something goes wrong, you can blow off the powder with compressed air and start over.
  4. Oven
    Take a look at the instructions that come with your powder paint. Typically, you’ll need to set your oven to around 180°C (356 degrees Fahrenheit). The parts should stay inside for 10-20 minutes. Remember, this time is measured after the part reaches the mentioned temperature, so you might want to add a few extra minutes. If you take it out too soon, you might notice the coating is rough, not smooth. In my experience, even if you leave the parts in the oven for 30-40 minutes, nothing bad usually happens.
  5. Cooling down
    This step is pretty self-explanatory. You need to cool down the parts before using/packaging them or so on. It depends on the ambient temperature but usually after around 15-20 minutes, you should be safe to touch the parts. Check before grabbing the part and burning your hand!
  6. Ready
    Congratulations! Your parts are ready! You can be proud of yourself – from just an idea and some online research, you’ve reached the end with your first powder-coated part. I know the feeling, it’s exciting and empowering! But don’t stop there! Experiment and play with different techniques and materials to try and improve the process even more. How about mixing powder colors or coating different materials? Let me know how your experiments turn out!

And finally some examples of the parts I had powder coated:

How to build a robot?

Robots are cool, I think we all agree on that. Right here I would like to give you a short introduction to all the topics that you will most likely face while building your first robot. In the beginning, I just wanted to say no worries, building simple robots is not hard at all, most of it doesn’t even require any soldering (sometimes you may need to solder cables to motors, but for simple robots that’s the only soldering required).

I also wanted to point out the difference between a robot and not a robot. Some tutorials refer to an RC car as a robot but in reality robot is a device that can work on it’s own. At the same time it’s not about fancy futuristic artificial intelligence or humanoid robots, it’s about simple tasks that are solved by the robot completely without human interaction. So a line follower or an obstacle avoiding robot are great examples of ROBOTS while a “robot” and a human with a remote next to it is not a robot.

Keep in mind that this is not a complete tutorial with code, schematic and DIY instruction. It’s meant as introduction to all the topics you should know about in order to even start and understand some of the robotics tutorials so that instead of mindlessly following those you understand what’s going on.

If you want to start easily with a kit, you can check out something like this with all the parts, chassis, motors, sensors, and Arduino. If you prefer to buy components individually check out the list below.

Here you can see a short one minute introduction video, and to learn more about all the topics continue reading:

Microcontroller

Microcontroller is a brain of the robot, all the logic, conditions and calculations are performed in here. To simplify it we can say that microcontroller is just a very very simplified computer, the internal structure is more or less similar. There is no screen or keyboard, just a chip with pins. By writing the program you can read pin states set conditions (if statements for example) do some math and set output pins conditions or communicate with other modules, sensors etc.

There are a lot of different types of microcontrollers but if you are just starting you should take a look at Arduino UNO (which is actually more than just a microcontroller, it uses Atmega328 as a microcontroller but Arduino is rather an ecosystem and collection of development boards). Any Arduino board is very easy to start with and Arduino UNO is additionally quite affordable (Original boards start at 23 USD or you can buy a Chinese Arduino clone for 5 USD). With UNO you can build blinking LEDs, learn electronics and programming, simple robots, home automation, measuring devices and even CNC machines! If you need more pins (trust me if you are just starting you don’t need more pins) you can buy Arduino Mega.

NameStore 1Store 2
Original Arduino UNOhttps://bit.ly/2MuCKMwhttps://bit.ly/3ormF7N
Clone Arduino UNOhttps://bit.ly/3t5gk59https://bit.ly/3osuWIi
Original Arduino Megahttps://bit.ly/2YnfYsQhttps://bit.ly/3pt5vro
Clone Arduino Megahttps://bit.ly/3aqqXHBhttps://bit.ly/2M3BsZf

Of course Arduino is not the only way to go. You can read about programming STM microcontrollers, AVR, or lately released Raspberry Pi Pico (programmed with C++ or Python). There are some more advanced boards like Maix Sipeed with an integrated screen and camera programmed with Python. You can also take a look at single-board computers like Raspberry Pi 4B or BeagleBone Black. But all of those examples are probably not the best for beginners.

Sensors

In order to build a robot (not an RC car) we need sensors. Sensors are devices that measure physical things and transform those readings into electrical signals so that we can read those with microcontroller. For example, to build object avoiding robot we need an ultrasonic sensor that will measure the distance between a robot and an obstacle. This distance or actually two-way time of travel of sound that is processed into the distance can further be processed to decide if the obstacle is close enough to stop the robot or turn. With 2 conditional statements (if(…){}) you can write a simple program for such a robot.

Another popular sensor for simple robots is a line sensor that can be used to build a line follower, that is a robot that follows the black line. By using three of those sensors at the front of the robot you can write a simple program that will drive forward when the line is detected by the sensor in the middle, if the line is detected by the right sensor it should turn right, and if the left sensor detects line you need to turn left. This is a simple example of a not really efficient program for a line follower but it works really well 🙂

There are other types of sensors, there is a sensor to measure everything you can think of air quality, pressure, soil pH sensor, LIDARs, movements sensors etc. Once you get more familiar with basic sensors you can start playing with those a bit more advanced. Ultrasonic sensor and line sensor are probably the easiest to start with and pretty straight forward to use.

NameStore 1Store 2
Line Sensorhttps://bit.ly/39q4qLxhttps://bit.ly/2MxQTbW
Ultrasonic Sensorhttps://bit.ly/3t1Quz7https://bit.ly/2YjCqTD
Sensor Kithttps://bit.ly/3aqzXfRhttps://bit.ly/39rnmJT

Motors

There is many options when it comes to motors for robotics but because this is an introduction I will focus only on simple and cheap motors. You should pay attention to the rated voltage and current of the motors. Usually, you should look for motors with voltage of about 5 to 12V. There should be a way to mount wheels or you will have to look for a DIY solution. In order to increase the torque and lower the RPM motor should have a built-in gearbox. To start I recommend those plastic yellow motors, those are not great and you wouldn’t build the most amazing robot ever with those but to start those are great!

NameStore 1Store 2
Yellow Motorshttps://bit.ly/3orwWknhttps://bit.ly/3pseObk
Small Motorshttps://bit.ly/3oqqgTmhttps://bit.ly/3adWmMX
Bigger Motorshttps://bit.ly/3qZZVxbhttps://bit.ly/3pthhSC

Motor driver (H Bridge)

There is no way to drive a motor directly with an Arduino, don’t even try because you will break it. In order to control the motors we need a motor driver also called H bridge. Again there is a lot of options and most of them are very similar. Main differences are max voltage and current that can be handled by a driver or some additional features. Some simple and popular drivers are listed below.

NameStore 1Store 2
L298https://bit.ly/36h9IH5https://bit.ly/3cgeLvq
L9110Shttps://bit.ly/3acjcVlhttps://bit.ly/3qYZyTI

Cables, Breadboards

Obviously, you will need some cables and a breadboard to connect everything together. They’re nothing complicated, buy some female-female, female-male, male-male cables. When it comes to breadboard use a bigger one for bigger projects and a smaller one for smaller projects, usually power rails on the sides are very useful.

NameStore 1Store 2
Cableshttps://bit.ly/2L20vLGhttps://bit.ly/2M2yGDx
Breadboardhttps://bit.ly/3cj6t67https://bit.ly/3t3MGgP

Chassis

In order to attach everything together, you will need a chassis. You can buy a set with chassis, motors and wheels or you can try to find your own DIY solution and make a chassis out of plastic or even cardboard (that’s how I built my first robot).

NameStore 1Store 2
Chassis 1https://bit.ly/3t3LJF7https://bit.ly/3cfuaw1
Chassis 2https://bit.ly/3a9Ebbmhttps://bit.ly/3cnsX5N

Batteries

The battery is always a really problematic part of building robots. The most common choice is a LiPo battery but it’s a little bit dangerous, you have to take care of it and be careful because discharging the cells under 3.2V may damage the battery. Those batteries are sold as 1S, 2S, 3S and so on which means one, two or three cells because each cell has a nominal voltage of 3.7V a two-cell battery has a nominal voltage of 7.4V (and a max voltage of 8.4V). Batteries vary with capacity, the bigger the capacity the longer you can power the robot. There is also max current that can be drawn from a battery this is labeled as for example 10C and it means that capacity multiplied by 10 will give the max amperage that you can draw from a battery.

Another (probably safer) way to go is to use protected 18650 batteries. It’s also more complicated because you need to create a battery pack on your own and combine a few of those batteries in parallel or in series. Professionally those batteries are spot welded together but you can just easily use a battery box to keep them together.

I don’t recommend going with AA or AAA batteries as you will need to recharge or replace those very often (it’s not good for the climate and your wallet) and the max current of those isn’t enough for some motors.

NameStore 1Store 2
2S LiPohttps://bit.ly/3iUpE7qhttps://bit.ly/2M2ILAn
3S LiPohttps://bit.ly/3qX8sRwhttps://bit.ly/2M2ILAn
4S LiPohttps://bit.ly/3iWMQSkhttps://bit.ly/2M2ILAn
18650 Batteryhttps://bit.ly/3a4ys6whttps://bit.ly/3orRskO
18650 Boxhttps://bit.ly/3a9hIv7https://bit.ly/36jr8Dh

Programming

A lot of people are scarred by programming, I am not really sure why. Programming is easy, you don’t need math to create simple robots! If you have any experience with C++ or similar programming languages you can start programming Arduino right now. If you don’t no worries, there is a lot of great tutorials and examples online. Once you start and try to write your own programs you will realize that it’s not that hard.

You can find some cool tutorials on official arduino website:

https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HomePage

Or just type “Arduino tutorial” into YouTube and you will find thousands if videos on this topic!

I hope this article helped you a bit with your robotics journey! If so don’t forget to share with friends and share you progress on Instagram by tagging me: @nikodembartnik and @indystry

Have a nice day!