Design Nomenclature / Surface & Material
Powder-coat finish
Also called powder coated, powdercoat, powder coat
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.