ocess are critical.
As a metal building product is placed in use, it is subjected to the rigors of the environment for the remainder of its lifetime. There is not much that one can do with the environment into which a product is placed, but the choice of building material can be—and must be—carefully considered so it can deliver satisfactory performance over the lifetime of the building. There are many aggressive conditions to consider, such as:
- Aggressive UV Conditions.
- High Temperature Exposure
- Aggressive Chemical Environments
All of the above conditions require the specifier to carefully consider the type of metal substrate to be used, as well as pretreatment and coatings selection. Unfortunately, there is no “one size fits all” solution.
Variability exists in all industrial processes, and to a degree this variability may affect long-term performance. In general, process variability is a minor factor along the coil coating supply chain. Far more important are the choices of substrate, pretreatment, and coatings (discussed above). A well-controlled coating process will produce inferior product if a poor choice is made of substrate (e.g., choosing a metallic-layer thickness that is too thin, which leads to early corrosion), or if a topcoat with poor durability pigmentation is used, producing excessive chalking and color change. Process variability may affect long-term performance resulting in corrosion, delamination or chalk and fade in the product.
Coil coated metal used for building products provides unrivaled long-term performance. The critical factors necessary to provide superior performance are to make an informed choice of the metal substrate, pretreatment, primer, and topcoat. Once these choices are made, the processes used to manufacture the metal substrate, pretreatment, and coatings, as well as the coil coating process used to produce the prepainted metal (if properly run and controlled), provide a level of consistency that sustains the performance of a metal building panel, and a metal building, for decades.
To learn more about the principal factors for long-term performance of metal building panels click here to access a copy of NCCA’s recently published Tool Kit #26 covering this topic.
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