Plastics are claiming significant strides into many markets due to property advantages such as reduced weight and lower system costs through design flexibility, increased process efficiency, and increased part performance. As a result, painting or printing on plastic materials has become essential in many applications, such as automotive components and packaging products, and this has posed new challenges for the coating industries.
The technology for coating on plastics is an extension of processes originally developed for metal and other non-polymeric substrates. The equipment, techniques, terminology, and regulations evolved in the coatings industry apply equally as well to the coating of plastics. However, the knowledge necessary to assure the quality and performance of painted plastic parts is different from that required with other substrates. This is primarily due to the low surface energy of plastic parts as compared to conventional metallic materials and the chemical similarity between the coating materials and the plastic substrate.