Tribostatic charging process

First, let’s define what is a tribostatic charge?

The tribostatic is charged by rubbing: electrostatic electricity accumulates rubbing the particles together, as they touch and separate many times.

Each material is able to receive and give a charge upon contact what is reflected in the tribostatic series, examples are given below.

The tribostatic series reflects the ability of materials to accept or release a charge during contact, there is an example below.

What makes a tribostatic charge effective?

In order for the tribo charge to work as it should, it is important to pick up necessary coating and contact material:

The most used is fluoroplastic or Teflon – one of the most electrically negative materials, excellently acquiring a negative charge, receiving electrons from contacts with other materials. But it happens that fluoroplastic does not charge well. For example, with polyurethane paints, you can use nylon for the same purpose, but be aware – it is quite tough, because of that the quality of the powder particles reduces.
The size of the powder paint. For successful charging, the particles must be quite large and the powder paint should have a certain dispersion. You’d better inform the powder supplier from the beginning to ship the correct product for you might use a tribo-static charging method.
The surface you will be working on must be clean. Remove moisture from the air with help of a compressed air preparation and drying systems.
Fluoroplastic tube twisted into a spiral is the most popular type of charge system. There are limitations due to the small internal surface area and low contact force with the powder.

there must be a structure that will create contacts between the charging surface and the powder paint particles;
the charge must be grounded, and do not take care that corona discharge does not occur on its surfaces.

It is also important for tibostatic sprayer to be designed properly because it affects on charging and powder deposition efficiency.

Therefore, we suggest that you get acquainted with our tribostatic sprayer model and other tools.