Design Nomenclature / Surface & Material
Powder-coat finish
Also called powder coated, powdercoat, powder coat
This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.
The appearance of an electrostatically applied polymer fused by heat into a film: thick, fully opaque, soft at the edges, and available in any color and any gloss level. It buries fine detail and rounds off crisp arrises — which is precisely why it hides a bad weld and ruins a sharp one.
In practice
Film thickness is the spec everyone forgets. It swallows engraving, closes threads, and moves a press fit measurably.
Not to be confused with
- Anodized finishThe appearance of an electrochemically grown oxide layer on aluminum: a hard, slightly translucent film with pores that take dye. It conceals nothing — it magnifies whatever finish was underneath. Blast first and it anodizes matte; polish first and it anodizes bright. Hardcoat runs thicker, darker, and takes color badly.
- ClearcoatA second specular lobe layered over the base material to stand in for a transparent coating — car paint, lacquered wood, wet plastic. It carries its own roughness and a fixed IOR near 1.5. Its thickness control only tints by absorption; the layer has no simulated depth and no parallax.