By Angus Mackie - QUALICOAT Chair
Over the last decade the QUALICOAT Specification for architectural powder coating has become a well established Specification across the UK and Ireland. The Association’s UK membership has now grown to 25 major UK & Ireland powder coat applicators, all of whom carry licences for the supply of QUALICOAT approved finishes. While the Specification continues to grow with more specifiers using it, education is key to ensure the continued reduction in powder coat failures.
To answer questions of the major facade specifiers in the UK, QUALICOAT has decided to support one of ZAK’s biggest global events held in London in November. Zak World of Facades is an international conference series specialising in facade design and engineering. Zak has already hosted over 30,000 delegates across its 129 completed conferences with these one-day conferences held in over 35 countries around the globe. The events offer a unique opportunity to enhance knowledge and skills on key subjects pertaining to building envelope design, engineering, fabrication and installation from industry experts across the complete value chain of the facade industry.
Unlike many standards, a QUALICOAT Specification comes with third party accreditation. All Members of QUALICOAT, which includes powder coaters, pretreatment suppliers and powder manufacturers agree to allow an independent test house, nominated by QUALICOAT, to undertake unannounced inspections of their plant and processes. The intention of these inspections is to ensure that the current Specification is being followed by demonstrating compliance, the Member is then licensed to supply QUALICOAT approved products and coatings. Members who fail to demonstrate full compliance are reinspected and can lose their licence as a result of further non-compliance being reported.
One of the most recent developments within the Association is the launch of QUALICOAT 3.0. Part of a licence holders responsibility is the provision of regular coated samples for extended ‘acetic salt spray’ and in some cases ‘filiform corrosion’ testing at the appointed test house, in the case of QUALICOAT UK & Ireland, this is at IFO Netherlands BV. In a very small number of these test samples it was noticed that premature failure could occur following these very corrosive and accelerated tests. With the cause of the issue unknown, QUALICOAT set up a Working Group of Members to try to identify what was causing the issue and how this could be eliminated to further enhance powder coating durability.
It became obvious during research that the aluminium alloy itself was the contributing factor, so the Working Group began to develop a specification for the alloys used in fenestration, namely alloy 6060 and 6063. The resulting alloy specification, which now forms Appendix A13 of the QUALICOAT Specifications 2023, requires the alloys to fall within the EN573-3:2019 Standard, which can be met using primary or secondary (recycled) aluminium and requires the following three tests to be carried out, Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES), Anodic Cyclic Polarisation (ACP) and Metallographic Study for Aluminium.
Whilst QUALICOAT 3.0 is a new Specification and is currently used on large facade projects, there are advances in other areas, such as pretreatment. Most members now use robust chrome free pretreatment systems but options also exist for anodic pretreatment of aluminium. Whilst putting your project into the hands of a QUALICOAT licence holder will ensure the correct questions are asked, learning the basics and knowing who to approach when specifying can help the design process. The team look forward to discussing powder coating in detail with conference delegates on 8th November at the Hilton Park Lane, London
The current QUALICOAT Specification is freely available for download via the Association website, qualicoatuki.org and offers an up-to-date list of licensed UK and Ireland Powder Suppliers, Pretreatment Suppliers and Applicators. Telephone support is available from QUALICOAT UK & Ireland Head Office in Birmingham on 0330 236 2800, the Association can also be followed on Twitter @Qualicoatuki or on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/company/qualicoat-uk-&-ireland.
