A new powdercoating oven

So I've been thinking lately while doing this blog. Why not pursue something I absolutely enjoy, and take it to the next level. It's fun, I'm very creative, and it's good money once you have enough of it. At this point, all I've ever used for powder coating was a cheap oven I bought off of e-bay.

Sure it's gotten the job done, and I've been able to do tons of small brackets, control arms, and such like that, but I'm ready to go bigger. I want to be powder coating motorcycle frames, chairs, entire tables, not just the random parts on my project cars.

With that, over the next few months, I will be building a home-made powder coating batch oven. I will probably end up building 2, as the amount of power required to power an oven that would hold say a car-frame is ridiculous, and that isn't needed at the moment.

My plan at the moment is simple. I'm going to build a powder coating oven, 4' wide, 4' deep, and 6' tall. This should be enough to hold a motorcycle or atv frame suspended. I've been over at the caswell forums recently with their oven building forum and reading up, and it really doesn't seem hard for someone of my skill level to put it together. I'm going to take it one step further though, and have a sectional divide that I can place inside of it, so that for smaller items I can run at half power, and only worry about a 4' x 4' x 4' oven, and remove the expansion when I need to go larger.

Building this oven won't be incredibly cheap, I've estimated having at least $1,500 into this, but I feel the benefits far outweigh the cost. If I can get 2-3 bike frame jobs, at $500 a piece, I will have covered my costs with ease, and everything after that will be profit for me. It's an investment I'm willing to make though as I feel the returns will be easily made back on it. Hell even if I never do a frame, at my standard rate, I could pay for it in a year.

I will definitely be using this blog to chart my progress on my new powder coating oven. I'll even have some pictures and the plans I used in order to get the job done, and also post any of the contact I come across that make this job easier. I will show how to build the overhead trolley system I want, plus removable racks for holding media on a horizontal surface. This should be alot of fun overall, and I hope you guys stick through for it ;)