SURFACE TEXTURE OF POWDER COATED THREE-DIMENSIONALLY SHAPED NATURAL FIBRE COMPOSITE ELEMENTS FOR FURNITURE APPLICATIONS

摘要

In the presented work natural fibre-based mats which are typically used in the automative industry were adopted for new applications in the furniture industry. While pressing of such mats to three-dimensionally shaped parts is accomplished rather easily by established equipment, the major technological challenge lies in the compliance of the part's surfaces with the very specific and high standards for surface quality required for furniture applications, especially when the finishing takes place by a powder coating process. Hence, the aim of this work was to investigate the influence of different compositions of bulk material on the surface quality after powder coating of 3D-parts by measuring surface texture with a profilometer. Mats derived from eight different fibre mixtures were each impregnated with two different binder types at two binder concentrations before they were pressed to 3D-parts. The effect of sanding was evaluated by sanding pre-treatment of half of the samples prior to powder coating while reference samples were directly powder coated.