Most plastics used in manufacturing today are thermoplastics. And as the name suggests, these plastics are molded using heat. Using still more heat to apply commercially hard coatings is out of the question. The high temperatures will simply cause the plastics to deform and lose important physical properties.

Until now the only viable way to offer consumers a choice of colored thermoplastic products was by first impregnating the plastic with pigments. Depending on which colors you're after, these pigments can be fairly expensive.

A completely new concept - SpectraTechnology introduces a unique, ground-breaking process for creating colored plastic products with polyurethane-tough finishes in any color you want. In just minutes. Without adding any heat.

This is what happens. The plastic product is coated with a specifically formulated 'paint' before moving into a recirculating (invisible) catalyst atmosphere at room temperature (⊇15°C). Here the wet coating absorbs molecules of catalyst and curing begins. Instead of 24 hours, SpectraKote™ takes just eight minutes to cure. Totally. So you no longer have any need to go to the extra trouble and expense of totally impregnating the plastic. After all, since all everyone ever sees is the surface, why bother? (For a more thorough description of what happens during the SpectraKote process, please check out the Basic Theory and The Process pages.)

The future - Quite frankly, we do not know just how many applications there are for SpectraKote when used with heat-sensitive materials like plastic. Aside from livening up beige-box products like computers, printers and scanners, we may even be able to develop a coating to protect the sensitive circuit boards inside them from corrosion and static electricity. However, even though we're just at the beginning of realizing how much SpectraTechnology can do, we also know the potential is close to unlimited.

More info...or suggestions - If you would like more information about how SpectraTechnology can help you offer your customers wider choices or if you want to suggest some applications for this amazing new process, just click Contact Us to e-mail your questions and/or comments.
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