Paint & Coatings

Testing for decorative, industrial and protective coatings — viscosity, drying, adhesion, gloss, film thickness and accelerated weathering.

Almost every coating result is a property of the panel rather than of the paint. IS 101 gives panel preparation a section of its own for that reason: change the substrate, the surface profile, the dry film thickness or the cure schedule and adhesion, gloss and salt-spray hours all move while the tin stays exactly the same. The consumables follow the same logic — ASTM B117 sets limits on the purity of the sodium chloride and the quality of the water fed to a salt-spray cabinet, and a cabinet run on table salt and tap water produces hours that mean nothing. Separately: household and decorative paints sold in India are capped at 90 ppm lead, which makes digestion and AAS a routine line on the bench rather than an occasional one.

Tests run here

  • Viscosity by flow cup, Krebs-Stormer and rotational viscometer
  • Drying time — surface dry, hard dry and through dry
  • Adhesion by cross-cut and by pull-off
  • Specular gloss at 20°, 60° and 85°
  • Dry film thickness on ferrous and non-ferrous substrates
  • Salt spray, humidity and accelerated UV weathering
  • Scratch, impact, bend and Taber abrasion resistance
  • Volatile and non-volatile content, and lead by AAS

Governed by

  • IS 101 — methods of sampling and test for paints, varnishes and related products
  • ASTM D523 gloss, ASTM D3359 adhesion and ASTM D4541 pull-off adhesion
  • ASTM B117 and ISO 9227 — salt spray
  • ISO 2409 cross-cut and ISO 2431 flow cup viscosity
  • Regulation of Lead Contents in Household and Decorative Paints Rules 2016, under the Environment (Protection) Act 1986 — 90 ppm limit
  • NABL accreditation under ISO/IEC 17025
  • physical-properties
  • spectroscopy
  • sample-preparation

What this sector draws on

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We will map it to grades, pack sizes and instrument specifications, and flag anything that is over-specified for what you are actually measuring.