New Equipment Part 1.

What you are seeing in this picture is a major upgrade to the shop. In late 2018 I started looking very heavily into how to creatively fund upgrading the shop so that we could produce more, better quality work. It took about 6 months but eventually I did figure out a way that cost me next to nothing in interest. So i set out to bring the shop quality up.

My first stop was for a new powder gun. We started the shop with a basic Eastwood dual voltage setup, and that gun worked great for us for the first 4 years. Then in early 2017 we were presented with the opportunity to majorly upgrade with a used Wagner gun. However this gun didnt come with the cart you see in the picture. Not entirely understanding how everything works i didnt see it as a big deal. However i soon learned that the cart was crucial to helping the powder flow through the gun and spray properly. The cart actually vibrates which keeps the powder nice and fluffy so it flows perfectly. When upgrading this time i wanted a brand new real deal. However i also wanted to make sure if something went wrong we still wouldnt be out of business. So i purchased a brand new Wagner gun exactly the same as i had buttttt this time it has the cart. So now we have extra everything as far as our spraying setup goes other then the cart which helps me sleep very well at night.

My next call was to find a new, proper spray booth. Up until this point we had been spraying powder in a small room I had built in the shop that used 4 box fans and a handful of house filters. This setup kinda worked and i had been making small changes here and there to help but it still wasnt great and there were lots of edges and areas that could catch and trap powder and then could pop out at any time and contaminate other powders. So after calling around to a few companies I found the best bang for my buck was a Columbia Coatings Kool Koat booth. I chose a 8x8x10 foot booth so that i had more then enough space to spray anything that went into the oven. I also chose to upgrade to the filter cleaning system so that i could simply plug in an airhose and flip a switch and boom, clean filters. Now when the booth arrived it took a little bit of doing to get put together and set in place but I could not be happier with it. Having the proper equipment is better then i could have even imagined.

Check back soon for part 2 of our shop upgrade........

Travis Ridenour

TLR Coatings

www.TLRCoatings.com

Kalamazoo, MI