What to consider when specifying exterior-durable powder coatings
Terms such as super-durable, ultra-premium, and high-performance are used frequently for marketing purposes when describing powder coatings; however, what do these terms really mean? Most of the time, trade-offs come with performance improvements. What are those trade-offs? This article describes, in detail, the performance differences in powder coatings based on literature and actual test results, and gives some insight into what’s important to consider when specifying exterior-durable powder coatings.
When a coating system is described as super-durable, it’s easy to think that this product has superior performance in all categories. This is a common misconception, when in fact, the term super-durable is reserved for powder coatings that have better gloss retention than standard-durable powder coatings have. The term is describing the resin, almost exclusively of the polyester family. A standard-durable coating has a very good balance of properties, such as gloss retention, flexibility, impact resistance, smoothness, and adhesion. These products are great for use when all of these properties are of concern. If a higher level of performance is required in one of these areas, there will often have to be a decrease in another performance property. These differences are because of the monomers, or building blocks, used in making the resins.