Gone Racin’…to
Embee Performance Coating

Roger Rohrdanz and I visited Embee Performance Coatings on Hathaway Street, in Santa Ana, California. We were told to expect something very special, but we had no idea how special it would be. Embee is not just a typical Mom and Pop Powder coating company. They are much more than that. We met Jeff Conrad, operations manager, who gave us a tour of Embee’s 14 buildings, covering some 130,000 square feet of working space, and the 323 employees who make this a very successful business. There are two divisions; one dedicated to powder and ceramic coating for the typical needs of the hot rodder, and a much bigger section which does work for the government and major commercial industries. The skills and higher standards required for the Aerospace industry is applied to the quality given to the hot rodders and their needs, and yet when we inquired about the costs, they were no higher than what one would pay at a small powder coating shop. Turn around time is no more than 5 days for powder coating, and 7 days for ceramic coating. Commercial jobs are usually handled by phone, fax or email. Embee has a fleet of 11 trucks making continuous deliveries. For the hot rod enthusiast, it is suggested that they come down to the showroom to pick from the 150 colors that Embee has in stock.
  
The size of the plant is amazing, but it has a well thought out design and order to it, and the retail section is separate and easy to get into and out. The employees are friendly and quick to offer help. The advantage in size means added benefits to the car enthusiast. All of the high standards required for government and commercial contracts are then adapted to the retail customer’s needs. It was pointed out that the maximum time allowed from the time a piece is blasted with Aluminum oxide, to the time that it is powder coated, is 4 hours or less. To let a piece sit longer than that creates small rust spots that will eventually work their way to the surface. We were shown the powder coating spray areas and baking ovens. Some were the normal size, around 10 feet, that you see in the smaller powder coating shops, and then we saw this mammoth spray booth that can accommodate objects up to 30 feet. The ovens were just as large. Once the temperature reaches 392 degrees, the part would bake for 10-15 minutes. A cardinal rule of Embee’s is to never blast more than you can reasonable bake within that 4 hour time limit. To help maintain this quality, there is a tagging system that is computerized and bar coded and allows an employee to follow a piece as it goes through the various processes required.

The plant runs 2 shifts a day, 6 days a week. Every morning, and sometimes twice a day, the plant is swept and mopped, and filters help to keep any contaminates from ruining the coating process. This place is remarkably clean. Inside and out, there isn’t any trash, or residues from the plating processes that are allowed to build up and cause problems. Jeff prefers to blast the surface clean with Aluminum oxide, and no other material, although at times they do use an acid bath to cleanse the surface. We then moved on to the ceramic coating building. Ceramic coating is used where the heat exceeds 392 degrees, with the ceramic coating able to stand up to 2100 degrees. The new Titanium ceramic coating is able to withstand up to 2400 degrees. Jeff points out that their policy is to ceramic coat both the inside, as well as the outside of the headers. Many powder coating companies will only coat the outside, but this presents problems. When both inside and outside are ceramic coated, there is a heat shield effect that protects the inner metal itself from deterioration. The cost is the same for coating both sides as it is at other shops where they only coat the outside. This is typical for the quality that Embee exemplifies. The knowledge gleaned from working on high specification government work is transferred to the car hobbyist at no additional cost. Jeff mentioned the businesses that send their parts to Embee for coating and plating. There was Summit, Jardine, TRD, Thorley, Innovative Turbo Systems, Big Gun Motorcycles, Arrow Engineering, IMCO, Delson Products, Boeing, the Federal Government, and many more.
 
Embee can put on just about any coating for you. We were shown 9 more buildings, with machine shops, grinding shops, research and development, vats and tanks with various solutions, and the Barometric chambers where the cadmium, aluminum and other metals were applied under great pressure. Much of this huge complex consists of processes for commercial and government projects. We saw crates of parts for helicopters, missiles, plane rivets and other machine parts that went through intensely monitored machining, plating and coating processes. There was alsoa paint shop, where paint was sprayed on, but unlike anything seen at home or at any car paint shop. Building after building contained large vats where parts of all sizes were being dipped in degreasers, or other cleaners. We were shown where they applied the Manganese, Tin, Nickel, and Copper platings. From there we were taken to another building, separate from these metals, where Cadmium and Silver were applied. Once applied the parts were baked in an oven at 375 degrees to remove hydrogen before the substrate became brittle. If a plated part is not baked after processing, it may be damaged due to hydrogen embrittlement.
 
The next building was the passivation department where impurities are bled out of the part. We saw the anodizing process where there are three types; corrosion protection, decorative colors and hard coat. We walked past the Air Reclaiming building, which insures that the plant meets all EPA and OSHA guidelines, and into the grinding shop, where parts are remeasured and then ground to exacting specifications before being sent on to be plated. The parts have to sit in this controlled climatic environment for 72 hours before they can be measured and ground, in some cases to 50 millionths. The last building was the shot department. Here they placed various parts in a booth and bombarded the parts with tiny ball bearing like BB’s, which hardens the part by compacting the surface of the metal and making it denser. Embee Performance is growing and next year they have plans to expand and open a speed shop to go along with their ceramic and powder coating business. Hot rodding is in their blood, and they have an interest in giving the hot rodder the best quality, experience and product at a price comparable to anyone.
 
Gone Racin’ is at [email protected] or go to the website at www.oilstick.com