Here are my notes from my visit to high-tech processing in Ingelwood:
http://www.hytechprocessing.com/1. Mike & Dominic are the father & son duo that run the place, Super nice and helpful easy to communicate with happy to weigh pros and cons of various finishes and processes
2. Hadn’t done a ton of bicycles or at least not a lot of high end road bikes, did have a weird steel fork in the office as a sample, didn’t know what a lug was, but once we looked at some images online were knowledgeable about what kinds of coatings would preserve detail, were a little worried about preserving pantographing with powder coating.
3. Cautioned against doing hyper glossy candied colors because you have to polish the frame before hand for them to come out really well
4. 100-125 min job order for a specific color
5. 45 for a color they are already spraying, colors vary day to day, a lot of black, orange, red, blue, silvery gray, they were working on a huge job of guitar FX pedals, a lot of bold primary colors, and a lot of black.
6. It takes about 3lbs of powder to do a bike, but you have to buy 5lbs, they quoted me 94.00 for Tiger exterior RAL 6019(kind of a mint green)
7. So 100 bucks for the powder, 100 bucks for the labor, and then 30-40 bucks for sandblasting (they don’t do sandblasting) so your looking at 250ish total, they seemed like they might work something out, cuz they were a little slow at the moment, although they are a small operation so when they get a big job they get super busy.
8. Weren’t that interested in doing a group spray with a discount although of course to do 3 frames with the same color would certainly cut down on the cost of the powder and they’d prob give you a break on the labor. I mentioned to them that mega would do the whole deal for 70.00, they took it in stride
9. They also do wetpainting and silkscreening in house, the cost of wetpainting was going to be around 100 bucks and around 200 for the labor, not that much more than powdercoating.
10. I tried to talk to them about doing just a clear coat on the bare metal, but they said that unless you buff or scratch up the metal in someway that it would just look like a gray bike, thye said the the finish on the bike after sandblasting wouldn’t give you much of a luster or depth, but I thought maybe this was just because of the kind of bikes they have done, my bike is pretty damn shiny.
11. I also briefly discussed doing a tinted clearcoat over another color or over bare metal, I could sense a little unfamiliarity, but he understood what I was asking and was willing to experiment but it would be just that, an experiment you wouldn’t really know what your were getting.
The verdict for me was if you can get the frame blasted for a price, and want a shinny black bike these guys are the same price as Mega and a lot closer to the westside (and especially me in Culver City), However if you want a specific color on a single bike your not going to get a deal, and your not going to get super bicycle painting experts, but probably a good middle ground, they are aware of some of the specific technical issues of painting bikes although I should have interrogated them more about masking and protecting threads and stuff but they seemed to know less about bikes than I would’ve liked.
I’m probably going to bring my frame in later this week and have them look at it and give me hard prices for a couple of options:
1. 1 color already in production,
2. a metallic color w’ clear coat
3. a specific semigloss color
4. wet painting and clear coat (since it wasn’t really all that much more than powder coating)
I’m also going to do some more research and try to find some other shops in LA proper and get some other prices, someone was telling me about a place on the east side called tortoise.
