Painting Plastic Enclosures

Painting Prowess--Ensuring Your Products Look Great

Painting Process--Final

Understanding Color
Color can make or break a product. Why? People respond to color whether they're aware of it or not. Marketing firms and ad agencies spend much time and dollars researching colors used in logos and other branding. We all recognize Google's multi-colored logo or the oranges and pinks of Dunkin' Donuts. Even the makers of M&Ms make careful color decisions!

There's also "psychology of color"--whites imbue feelings of cleanliness; blues and greens suggest calm. It's no wonder that many medical products use these color combinations. So how do you decide what color to use? Here are some questions to ask: Who will be using your product? Do you have a color brand already in place? If yes, have you ensured that the paint being used for the new product will match the color used in other products? Do you want to convey an image of warmth (reds and oranges), calm (blues, light greens), fun (bright purples)--the adjectives are endless and so are your color options.

Understanding Texture and Gloss
Textures run the gamut from light-honed to fine to medium to everything in between. Keep in mind that simply saying you want a "medium texture" might not be accurate--texture must be well defined. At ThermoFab, we can either supply customers with different texture chips or we can receive a sample texture from customers, and then custom create a chip for it. This ensures that the texture remains consistent quarter to quarter, year to year, batch to batch.

The reason you want to control texture so tightly is that it will influence gloss. Every product has a gloss level. If you change the texture plus or minus, it will change the appearance of the gloss, which will change the appearance of your product. Imagine having a product manufactured during Q1 sitting next to a product manufactured during Q4 and they don't look alike! Paying attention to and tightly controlling texture and gloss assures that this won't happen.

A Word on Durability
It all goes back to usage. Where and when will your product be used? Under the heat of the Arizona sun? (See our article on Titleist's Launch Monitor below.) In the sterile environment of an OR? At the hands of little kids? While your durability needs will vary from product to product, it's important that the paint chosen for your product can withstand whatever environmental conditions it faces.

ThermoFab executes all painting in-house to ensure maximum control over color, gloss, and texture. For the exterior color, we can color match using your color sample chip or specification. To ensure the right color is applied every time, ThermoFab uses Dupont Spectramaster.