Dear Friends,
One of our most important priorities is to ensure a proper cure of our coatings. With a proper cure, our paints will withstand exposure to the elements, chemicals and more, as they are designed to do.
Conversely, without a proper cure our coatings can’t be expected to properly perform to specifications. If a coating isn’t properly cured, there is an increased chance for failure, which is problematic for Century, our customers and the end users.
We’ve recently begun using a piece of equipment at many of our customers’ locations to help make sure that under-cured paint is something that we don’t have to worry about. The tool is called a Datapaq Oven Tracker, and it’s been insightful into the performance of the ovens many of our customers use to speed the curing process of their paints.
The Datapaq has six sensors which are attached to your products. Three of those sensors will measure surface temperature, while the other three will measure air temperature inside of an oven. Along with temperature, we can see how long it takes an oven and the substrate to reach a peak temperature, as well as how long that peak temperature is maintained.
The Datapaq rides with the substrate through the oven, measuring temperature along the way, and in the end produces a graph as you see above. From that data, we can tell if the oven is getting the temperature it needs for a proper cure.
We’ll be using this technology more in the coming months. We strive to have warm-weather baseline readings for customers well before the winter months hit, then ensure that the same cure is achieved in the colder months when oven health is even more critical.
This data will also be stored in Century's records, and can be used to compare oven health in the years to come.
Sincerely,
