How does it work?
A fluid bed hopper can be made square or round and of any material, even wood! PCF makes it's own standard 45 lbs. round hopper of stainless steel. Compressed air enters the bottom chamber of the fluid bed. The air is then forced up through an extremely fine porous polyethylene plate and into the upper chamber. Here in the upper chamber the powder is bubbed, fluffed or for a better word, fluidized by the air. If you were to put your hand into fluidizing powder, it would feel like putting you hand into a container filled with cool water! Clean compressed air of 20 p.s.i. at 5 cubic feet per minute (c.f.m.) is all that is needed for a small fluid bed. As a fluid bed is made larger, only the c.f.m must be increased. This fluidizing action allows easy dipping of hot (180+ deg.) parts into the fluidized powder. The powder contacts and melts onto the hot part. The part stays in the fluidized powder for a short time, removed and returned to the oven for curing. As long as the part remains hot, the part can be dipped several times into the fluidized powder to increase the coating thickness. Remember, parts will cool quickly while in the fluidizing powder and reheating maybe necessary before the another dipping.
PCF has several standard round stainless steel hoppers which were designed for manual and automatic powder spray guns but have been found to work well in many fluid bed applications. The fluid plate inside the hopper is easy to clean and quickly replaceable on both the 45 lb. and 5 lb. hoppers. (NOTE: In the picture with Robin, the small item on top of the hoppers in the picture are powder pumps with would normally feed powder to a spray gun. They are not need or included.)
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