November 2007
More goes into the painting of your product than you might think--from making sure the paint used is durable to understanding color, texture, and gloss. Here's a painting primer that'll help make your products shine.
Painting Prowess--Ensuring Your Products Look Great
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.
Case in Point--Hitting a Hole in One with Titleist
The process of perfecting a professional golfer's swing--be it someone like Vijay Singh or Zach Johnson--is only as good as the computer systems analyzing the swings, and these systems are only as good as the materials that go into making them. What it comes down to, quite literally, is heat.
The Titleist Launch Monitor' (TLM') is a diagnostic tool that analyzes a golfer's swing. With this data, equipment changes can be recommended to help improve the golfer's game based on his or her current swing. TLMs make the rounds of golf courses--from New England to Florida to Arizona. Often packed in cars or vans, the launch monitor's plastic housing needs to protect the delicate digital cameras and other computer components inside from extreme temperatures found in the environment and inside vehicles.
ThermoFab chose to pressure form the parts using KYDEX' V103 (UL Std. 94 5V), a fire-retardant thermoplastic sheet. The typical value for its heat deflection temperature (HDT) @264psi (1.8 MPa) annealed is 168'F (75.5'C).
The parts were painted with Urachem, a two-component polyurethane enamel, which can be textured or applied as a smooth coat. It is used for metal and plastic substrates found in enclosures for electronic, medical, and industrial equipment. Urachem is extremely resilient in myriad weather conditions and can be color matched. To this end, ThermoFab took a metal Titleist golf club and matched the color of the club's head to the color of the Urachem used on the TLM. Painting perfection!
People Who Make ThermoFab Fabulous: Meet Russ Lang
As ThermoFab's Quality Assurance Manager, Russ Lang's logical and diplomatic nature brings a strong but temperate force to ThermoFab that has helped the company grow and improve while delivering top-rate client service. As the go-to person for problem-solving, Russ' famous logic helps his customers and fellow employees succeed in a competitive environment. With his combination of manufacturing, information technology and engineering skills, Russ understands that quality is the result of all aspects of an organization working in concert with its customers. He takes managing quality assurance to a new level at ThermoFab.
Russ is a forward thinking man who never stops learning from his job and his customers. His open nature brought a sophisticated understanding of product management in a previous job at Helix Technology, where he was responsible for lifecycle management implementation. There he cut product development time in half.
At Smith & Nephew, Russ served as Network Administrator and developed an automated document control system. He successfully improved design re-use and reduced design errors. While working as the Manufacturing Systems Engineer at Digital Equipment, Russ introduced 3D solid model design and analysis to the hardware development process and cut the product prototype cycle by 75 percent.
As part of his Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing Systems from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Russ demonstrated the use of solid model programming to design and program a robotic assembly workstation. He also has a Bachelor of Science degree in Manufacturing Engineering from California State Polytechnic University in Pomona.
ThermoFab is committed to being the leader in custom plastic enclosures.
Contact us today to learn how we can take you from files to finished product in just 4-6 weeks!
Sincerely,
Thomas A. King, Jr., President
ThermoFab
email: engineering@thermofab.com
phone: 888-494-9777
web: http://www.thermofab.com