Views: 0 Author: Mancy Li Publish Time: 2023-04-26 Origin: Zhongshan Yishang Metal Products Co., Ltd
Although many contract sheet metal manufacturers and machining factories provide powder coating finishing services, the vast majority outsource or subcontract work to third parties. However, there are significant benefits to collaborating with wafer fabs that provide integrated manufacturing services, including internal powder coatings, all under one roof
Collaborating with metal manufacturing plants and mechanical workshops with end-to-end manufacturing capabilities such as internal powder coatings has five main benefits:
Cost savings
Quality control
Reduce waste and rework
Speed and efficiency
Customer service and satisfaction
When powder coating services are kept in-house, it means that contract metal fabricators are able to accurately quote costs for a project down to the dollar, and without any additional mark-ups included by using outsourced suppliers or vendors. This results in savings for their customers, who don’t have to pay more, over and beyond what the service actually costs to complete. There are also no unfortunate surprises regarding the project’s costs, because in-house powder coating gives fab shops complete control over the process, allowing them to fully understand from the start what the project will entail and quote it with confidence.
When powder coating is outsourced to a third party, it can be difficult to control quality, especially when it comes to metal finishing projects. For instance, it’s not uncommon for a metal part’s surface imperfections to lack complete and even paint coverage when powder coating is completed offsite. This is especially true with gloss finishes, which make it much more difficult to hide scratches and other marks than when matte finishes are used. In-house powder coating specialists have the experience and training to identify these issues or flaws in the metal parts prior to painting and work alongside the quality control team to address them before they move on to be finished. 
Beyond surface imperfections, in-house powder coating can be closely supervised by a team that understands how the part should ultimately look and perform, meaning problems with the paint itself, like color mismatches and non-uniform thicknesses, can be more quickly addressed and most often completely prevented in the first place.
Painters who work in environments that only handle one process are less likely to have this level of metal fabrication-specific knowledge than those who work within a metal fab facility, which means that defects may not be caught until after they are painted and sent back to the fabricator for completion of other processes like assembly and integration or shipping and delivery. When this happens, it can negatively affect lead time and add to the cost of fabrication due to wasted parts and rework.
Additionally, shipping metal parts back and forth can lead to other types of damage, both when shipping to and from an offsite powder coating service. Shipping to the vendor can cause pieces to rub against each other creating scratches or other marks on the metal surfaces that may not be addressed adequately during the powder coating process. Shipping from the vendor back to the fabricator can have similar issues, only now, the result is damage to newly-applied paint — yet another cause of part waste and rework.
Sending products to be finished by an offsite powder coating company lengthens lead times and ultimately slows down the product’s speed to market, sometimes by weeks. Depending on the order size, in-house powder coating can be turned around in as little as a day when it’s part of an end-to-end fabricated metal and machining project.
Outsourcing powder coating also creates fluctuations in lead-time estimates that are rarely an issue when all manufacturing services are provided in the same place. Once a part leaves the fabricator’s facility, they relinquish most of their control over when they might get that part back and on its way to being compl
eted and delivered to their customer. In order to avoid disappointing their customers and losing business, it’s standard to build substantial “wiggle room” into delivery estimates when an outsourced powder coating service is used. In-house powder coating does not require that type of padding to be built into estimates, leading to faster delivery of finished products.
When powder coating services are kept in-house, it means the fabrication team who is managing the project is able to provide better and more thorough service to their customers as they are able to keep an eye on the project from start to finish. And because fully-integrated metal fab shops are able to deliver higher-quality manufacturing outcomes faster and at lower costs, it’s easy to see in-house powder coating might be considered a significant value to their customers, too. For fabricators who emphasize customer satisfaction, the investment in value-added manufacturing processes like powder coat lines is well worth the price.