P A powdercoating system

infideleggwelder

infideleggwelder

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Bought the system yesterday. Played with it today, coated a bunch of bullets a nice blue. Seems to waste a lot of powder, and the flow rate adjuster does not seem sensitive at all.( it was not easy to adjust). Not sure if this is normal.
I`m sure there will be a learning curve, sprayed them base down, and didn’t get them completely coated- mostly but a few seem a little naked. They stuck to the foil, would it be easier to coat them then roll onto non-stick foil?

How do you guys who do this, do it?
 
Not familiar with the P A system at all, mine is an Eastwood and has no "flow adjuster" on the gun. The flow adjuster I use is on the compressor and is very "user friendly". Powder waste has never been a problem that I have ever had, there is a small amount of spray that lands between the slugs to an energized pan but not much more than would coat five or six bullets while coating a hundred or so.

I gun-coat sometimes with them base-down on a cookie sheet then transfer with tweezers to another sheet with parchment paper(its cheap) on it, they never stick to the parchment. any bullet cooked base down has an opportunity to have base flashing to differing extents. In my experience ,gun coated have thinner coating than Shake-n-bake so flashing is less...not a problem in either case tho as it is easily scrubbed off at sizing or can be just thumb pushed through a home made cookie-cutter type utensil.

You can also buy very cheap cookie trays at the "Dollar Store" that have a bunch of holes drilled in them...these can be used to hold slugs nose-down and just gun-coat the shanks & bases. Again I use two cookie plates for this, one to coat as described the other has a layer of parchment on it with holes punched to correspond to the tray holes and again tweezers transfer slugs to parchment tray. These slugs will be flash clean and nose clean (works if you have a bore rider nose slug).

These holes in the pans as-bought wont accommodate ever bullet nose you might want to coat but 15 minutes with a drill of appropriate size will custom fit most any you can come up with.

....sound like a severe pain in the a$$ doesn't it...but the reality of it is that it will make cast bullet use a so-simplified operation compared to the century of mold style-shape, alloy formulas, lube testing
that our predecessors endured...and still had leading, accuracy problems.
 
C64736CB-C3C9-47B9-83C5-976B73672466.jpgWhat I do is I have a lyman tumbler I sealed the top holes with tape so the powder coat does not come out. Dump about 15 lbs of cast bullets in. Add one heaping teaspoon of powder coat powder cover with the cover and shake for about 20 minutes. It generates enough electrostatic to coat the bullets. Then I dump the bullets on trays covered with non stick foil. Cook at 410 for 20 minutes.
Remove bullets from oven dump in a bucket of water. Dump bullets on my deck to dry and repeat. Then I size all the bullets with a lee sizer. Then repeat the process. If you do not have a tumbler you can use plastic bbs in a Tupperware dish covered swirl and shake the bullets with the powder coat. Remove with twizzers and cook as I do. This method provides great coverage but takes a lot more time then what I do and my bullets are good enough for my purposes.
 

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I have never tried my gun with more than 1/4" of powder in the bottle and like you, it works. different powders will spray different than others, some powders require a second blow before cooking Ive noticed. How much air pressure are you running, my directions specify "under 5 lbs." but I have discovered that 8 lbs or so on the gauge ( the gauge is a cheapy so reading is/can be subjective ) provides a more even powder distribution. Some of the boys on CastB complain about poor electrical transfer and have installed extra electrode prongs to their guns but with my Eastwood, electrical transfer hasn't been a problem at all.
 
fingers284 said:
I have never tried my gun with more than 1/4" of powder in the bottle and like you, it works. different powders will spray different than others, some powders require a second blow before cooking Ive noticed. How much air pressure are you running, my directions specify "under 5 lbs." but I have discovered that 8 lbs or so on the gauge ( the gauge is a cheapy so reading is/can be subjective ) provides a more even powder distribution. Some of the boys on CastB complain about poor electrical transfer and have installed extra electrode prongs to their guns but with my Eastwood, electrical transfer hasn't been a problem at all.
Click to expand...

I have seen all sorts of threads on modifying guns for our application. The most common was to modify an orifice to allow more air into the paint container iirc. Will do some digging.
 
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