Painting washers & dryers:

[d-jones]

Sorry Jeff, but I think you're mistaken

Baking is a method used by manufacturers to force dry the paint. The cost of those ovens is reduced to virtually nothing when you consider the shear volume of autos passing through them. Catalyzed enamels are much more expensive than non catalyzed, so costs would rise with their use. On the other hand, body shops make use of catalyzed enamels because you can't put an assembled auto in the oven without doing serious damage to all the rubber and plastics. This is true for appliance manufacturers as well. It's less expensive to build an oven and pass thousands of cabinets through it than it is to pay for catalyzed enamels for those same cabinets. It all comes down to scale. So unless Freddy, or anyone else for that matter, has access to an oven large enough to stick a washing machine cabinet in, the best we can do is catalyzed enamels. Just plain old heat lamps on a stand won't make the paint any harder. They just speed up the drying process. So if you aren't in a hurry you can do without them.

 

[jeffg]

It's a riot reading this while staring at our W&D pair: a Speed Queen washer with a heat-cured porcelain finish sitting next to our crap Whirlpool Cabrio dryer (with a cheaper enamel finish). The pair are the exact same age, and the washer still looks brand new. The dryer, meanwhile, is a dulled mess of surface scratches and paint nicks. You can literally take your fingernail and shave the paint off the surface. Even our flipping laundry baskets scratched right through it.

Absolute junk imo. Heat is not used to "dry" enamel, it's used to cure it. Simply stated it's impossible to replace heat with hardeners or otherwise chemically.

 

[hydralique]

Modern urethane two-part or catalyzed paints cure through a chemical process not through evaporation of solvents (like lacquer paints do) so do not need heat to cure. However, it is important that both the air temperature and temperature of the items being painted are within the limits specified by the paint manufacturer. To accommodate various temperature ranges paint manufacturers offer reducers and hardeners in different ranges so an experienced painter can select his paint chemicals to work properly in his environment on the day he will be painting.

 

Manufacturers like heated paint booths for several reasons but one is that they must have consistent conditions throughout the year for painting or they'd have to adjust paint mixtures constantly to accommodate changing temperatures. The paint is applied to bare panels by robots and is formulated for this and the temperatures in the booths. It's a much quicker process than painting by hand, another reason manufacturers like it.

 

One distinction to be aware of is that the terms "two-pack" or "catalyzed" refer to the use of a hardener to provide the chemical reaction that makes the paint cure and shouldn't be confused with the terms "single stage" and "basecoat-clearcoat". Single stage paint is a topcoat that once applied over primer becomes the final surface, although more than one coat is usually needed to get proper coverage. With a basecoat-clearcoat system the basecoat is applied over the primer first, then after a short time a clearcoat is applied over that. In this case the basecoat does nothing more than give color and make things pretty while the clearcoat provides the shine and durability. This allows water-borne basecoats to be used (though not all basecoats are such), while the clearcoat will be a catalyzed paint. Basecoat-clearcoat is used for pretty much all cars today as it works much, much better with metallic paints used on the majority of cars. For a non-metallic paint a single stage is simpler to apply and easier to repair if damaged.

 

One thing that must be remembered: catalyzed urethane paints contain isocyanates. They aren't good for you and proper precautions must be taken by the painter to protect himself.

 

Link below is to a very good website for painting cars but most of the paint information should apply to appliances as well. Painting may not be rocket science but it's pretty sophisticated and there are lots of ways to do it so you can't study too much. And Freddy, while most of the paint guns discussed on the site are either American (deVilbiss & Sharpe), Japanese (Iwata) or German (Sata), Asturo makes some very good guns in Italy. Asturos aren't common here in the US as they aren't widely distributed but should be easily available to you.

 

http://www.autobody101.com/forums/

 

[d-jones]

<a name="start_44150.651156">It's a riot reading this while staring at our W&D pair: a Speed Queen washer with a heat-cured porcelain finish sitting next to our crap Whirlpool Cabrio dryer (with a cheaper enamel finish).</a>
 
<strong>Jeff - Nobody is going to argue that baked on enamel paint is as hard or durable as baked on enamel porcelain. The two products aren't even remotely similar. Freddy was asking about painting, so that's what's being discussed. Furthermore, facilities willing to re-fire a porcelain appliance top are not easy to find. You'd likely have to ship your top away someplace to have it done. Then there are other issues to contend with. There's a shop down the street from me here that restores and sells old stoves. They have their own oven(kiln is more accurate) for baking on porcelain, and they cautioned me that the current crop of colors available are very limited, so matching anything is out of the question, and that the very high temperatures involved risk warping the panel. In other words, they said don't risk it. The bottom line is that I'm talking about paint(apples) and you've launched into a discussion about porcelain(oranges) without telling anyone.

But since you seem to have had the impression that I was talking about porcelain rather than paint, why did you bring up the auto industry? I've never heard of porcelain being used anywhere on a car.

 

[jeffg]

> But since you seem to have had the impression that I was talking about porcelain rather than paint, why did you bring up the auto industry? I've never heard of porcelain being used anywhere on a car. <

I raised the point that manufacturers in general use heat-cured enamels, regardless of application, when durability is important. I think you and maybe others misunderstood my initial response in this thread. I was referring to porcelain enamel. When I say professional shops I'm talking places with kilns, not Joe's Auto Shop with a set of heatlamps.

 

[carmine]

I hate to wade into this, but baking re-finish paint is just a marketing gimmick.

Real "baked" paint is used in the manufacture of new cars (and appliances). The paint used is a different formulation than anything available to the general public. It contains few VOCs, and higher amounts of solids. It's baked at temperatures higher than could be withstood by plastic/rubber/etc., so the car must be a "body-in-white" (sheetmetal only).

The good news is, re-finish paints (cured/catalyzed with chemical heat as explained above) are better than ever. I've repainted numerous cars using catalyzed urethane and after years of outside exposure, they look as good as new. I painted my '64 Kenmore fridge about 15 years ago with simple enamel, and it looks fine.

I've worked in the auto industry for 20 years, and have been painting cars since I was 15. I also wouldn't consider paint as an alternative for porcelain.

 

[rinso]

Is there any way one could procure a porcelainized finish for a re-paint job?

 

[retromania]

Freddy,

Is it painted yet?

 

[jeffg]

Eugene, try http://www.customceramic.com/services.htm, http://www.porcelainenamel.com or ask local professional restorers who they use for reenameling. We've used this company here in Calif. with great success:
[this post was last edited: 1/7/2013-14:45]

http://www.carolinasantiqueappliances.com/Web/index.php?act=viewDoc&docId=2