Powdercoating frames, the tests are in!

[Big Winky]

Ok, people. I had some tests done on powdercoating the frame. these are the results.
Powdercoating the frame is ok, No damage to the temper.
this was done at a temperature of 425 degrees for the base coat. the clear coat was applied next (required for some colors as a UV protector) also heated to 425 degrees. no damage to temper. Next we had the powdercoat removed, this is where it got bad! the normal way to remove powdercoat to fix a bad job, to change the color or repowdercoat due to wear, is to heat the part to a temperature high enough to "burn" the coating so that it can be removed by a light blasting to get back to virgin material. When this was done the frame tubes and all thin cross sections lost all temper and were "dead soft". the cast sections faired slightly better, but did lose the temper in areas resulting in a annealed frame, which would require reheat treating (some more cash). If your thinking "why not just sand blast the old powdercoat off", think again. We have blasted powdercoating off parts before and to put it simply, it sucks, the stuff is terrible to remove and it takes hours to do a complete frame.
So in ending... If you have powdercoated your frame... we hope you like the color and quality of the job and take care of the finish, as getting it done again correctly will cost big bucks.
Personally, I'm sticking with anodizing, it's a lot of messing around too, but I can change colors for less than half the price and have damaged areas of the finish fixed cheaper.
BTW... maybe it doesn't look so bad in aluminum after all.