Why In-House Sandblasting Makes Better Powder Coating
Why In-House Sandblasting Makes Better Powder Coating
Surface preparation is the most critical step in powder coating - and it’s often the most overlooked. Many powder coating shops outsource their sandblasting, which can compromise quality and add days to your schedule. Here’s why in-house sandblasting capability matters for your projects.
The Problem with Outsourced Blasting
When a powder coater sends your parts to a separate blasting facility, several things can go wrong:
Time delays: Parts sit waiting for transport, then wait at the blast shop, then wait for return transport. What should take a day can stretch into a week.
Quality inconsistency: The blaster doesn’t know (or care) about your coating requirements. They blast to their standard, not yours.
Surface contamination: In the time between blasting and coating, freshly blasted steel can begin to oxidize. Moisture, oil from handling, or airborne contaminants can compromise adhesion.
Communication gaps: When issues arise, you’re playing telephone between two separate businesses.
The In-House Advantage
When sandblasting and powder coating happen under one roof, you get:
1. Better Adhesion
A freshly blasted surface provides the ideal anchor pattern for powder coating. When parts go straight from the blast booth to the coating booth, there’s no time for oxidation or contamination. The result is a stronger bond between coating and substrate.
2. Faster Turnaround
No transport, no waiting in another shop’s queue. Parts can be blasted and coated in the same day, cutting your total turnaround significantly. For production schedules, this matters.
3. Quality Control
When one shop handles the entire process, there’s accountability at every step. If the blast profile isn’t right, it gets fixed before coating - not discovered after the parts are finished.
4. Flexibility
Need to adjust the blast profile for a specific coating? Want a heavier prep on rusty parts? In-house blasting means we can adapt to what each job requires, not what a third party decides to do.
What Sandblasting Actually Does
Sandblasting (or abrasive blasting) accomplishes several critical things:
- Removes contamination: Mill scale, rust, old coatings, oil, and dirt that would prevent adhesion
- Creates profile: The microscopic peaks and valleys that give the coating mechanical grip
- Exposes clean metal: Fresh, reactive surface that bonds well with the coating
Skip or rush this step, and even the best powder coating will eventually fail.
Choosing the Right Media
Different jobs call for different abrasive media:
- Aluminum oxide: Aggressive, reusable, good for heavy mill scale
- Steel grit: Creates angular profile, ideal for coatings requiring maximum adhesion
- Glass bead: Gentler, good for aluminum and lighter cleaning
An experienced blaster matches the media to the job - not just whatever’s in the hopper.
The Performance Powder Works Approach
At our Royse City facility, we invested in in-house sandblasting specifically because we know it produces better results. Every part we coat gets prepped under our roof, by our team, to our standards.
When you bring us rusty steel or parts with old coatings, we handle the entire process. No subcontractors, no finger-pointing, no mystery about what happened to your parts.
The bottom line: In-house sandblasting isn’t just a convenience - it’s how quality powder coating is done.
Ready to see the difference? Contact Performance Powder Works for your next project.