Solving Fluidity Problems for Automotive High-End Finishes

With the rapid development of new energy vehicles, the aesthetic requirements of automobile exterior and interior finishes have been improved unprecedentedly. Traditional conventional powder coatings with particle size of 20-100μm are difficult to meet the high-standard finishing needs of high-end automobile parts. The thick film layer is prone to obvious orange peel texture, surface ripple and poor flatness, which cannot match the delicate and high-gloss design of new energy automobile shells, wheel hubs and interior precision parts. Ultra-fine powder coating with a particle size of 10-40μm has become the core material for high-end automotive thin-film finishing due to its excellent leveling performance and ultra-smooth film-forming effect.

Ultra-fine powder can form a uniform and delicate thin film of 30-60μm after spraying and curing. Compared with ordinary powder, it has higher surface flatness, no obvious orange peel, higher gloss retention and more uniform color saturation, which perfectly meets the high aesthetic standards of automobile exterior parts. In addition, the ultra-thin film forming characteristic can effectively reduce the raw material consumption, reduce the overall weight of parts, and conform to the lightweight manufacturing trend of new energy vehicles. It is also very suitable for precision hardware parts and plastic surface bottom coating with high dimensional accuracy requirements.

However, ultra-fine powder has inherent technical defects in production and application. Due to the ultra-fine particle size, the specific surface area of the powder increases exponentially, and the intermolecular van der Waals force is significantly enhanced, resulting in extremely poor powder fluidity. The powder is easy to absorb moisture and agglomerate during storage and spraying, resulting in unstable spraying output, low transfer efficiency, uneven coating thickness and surface particle defects, which has always been a major technical problem restricting the large-scale application of ultra-fine powder.

TYOPSUN has solved the fluidity bottleneck of ultra-fine powder from two dimensions of formula modification and equipment optimization. In terms of formula, nano-scale flow aids and anti-caking agents are used for surface modification of ultra-fine particles to reduce intermolecular adhesion and improve powder fluidization performance. In terms of equipment, the upgraded ultra-fine air classifying mill adopts multi-stage fine classification and constant-temperature grinding technology, which accurately screens 10-40μm qualified particles, removes oversized particles and excess fine powder, and ensures concentrated and uniform particle size distribution. The whole grinding process is constant temperature and low heat, which avoids powder agglomeration caused by high temperature friction.

After TYOPSUN’s process optimization, the ultra-fine powder has excellent fluidity and sprayability, stable electrostatic adsorption performance, high transfer efficiency, uniform thin-film leveling effect, and greatly improved finished product qualification rate. At present, this ultra-fine powder production technology has been widely used in the supporting production of high-end new energy automobile parts, providing stable and high-quality finishing solutions for the automotive industry.