‘By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.’ Those famous words from Benjamin Franklin can be applied to most of what a business does, but there’s no place in which they are more relevant than when it comes to the use of industrial materials.
Whether you’re involved in structures such as buses or trains that battle through the elements every day, are making equipment that needs to be deployed underwater or at extreme temperatures, or you’re engaged with the construction of structures (such as wind turbines that stand and take whatever Mother Nature throws at them), you need to consider how to protect them from the elements.
That involves, quite rightly, picking a paint or surface coating that will ensure that the surface looks the part. And, more practically, that it can cope with the conditions it is needed for.
Yet there’s a vital first step that can’t be ignored if you’re to get this right. If a surface isn’t properly prepared before the painting and coating stage, then all you’re doing is temporarily covering a problem that, later down the line, is going to take time and money to fix.
As Global Finishing Solutions trainer Jason Garfoot put it: “No paint job will ever be better than the prep job.”
The preparation stage is vital in a number of ways. Done right, it is a key part of the process. The right preparation stage will involve:
- Masking
- Degreasing
- Stripping existing coatings
- The removal of dust
- Cleaning off any other dirt
Just as in a domestic setting, you can’t just ‘paint over’ issues like those above. Doing so will only cause them to resurface further down the line – something that will prove a big problem if it means taking something like a wind turbine or train ‘out of service’ while it is fixed. In fact, it’s thought that 80 per cent of coatings issues can be directly put down to inadequate surface preparation.
Every second that is taken to repaint or treat a surface is a second that a piece of equipment is not earning money; quite the opposite, in fact.
It will also give paint the right sort of surface to cling, which could be crucial in ensuring that it ‘works’. Some paints come with a guarantee that is dependent on the right surface preparation work having been carried out. There’s little point in deploying specialist paint without doing the preparation work needed for it to work.
How this is done depends on the material in question and the use that you have in mind. From paint spray booths to blast cabinets and full blast rooms – such as these from Airblast AFC – there are all sorts of ways of creating the right controlled conditions that will help you to prepare a surface correctly. So, bear it in mind: you’ll avoid a lengthy and costly job to redo work later down the line.
Comments are closed.