How thick should the walls be for a powder coating oven?
A wall thickness of 4″ and is very adequate to accommodate the insulation needed for the maximum temperature of 450F of a powder coating oven. Why are some thicker? Good engineering of an oven requires the optimum in air flow and each component must be designed to work together. A well designed air flow will allow for a complete exchange of air without creating a positive or negative pressure in the oven. The key items in design – circulation fan cfm, exhaust fan cfm, supply ducting, and static pressure all must be sized properly.
There are four reasons why some manufacturers use thicker walls.
They use the walls as support and as they do not have the needed support to hold the burner box.
Their air flow creates a high positive pressure which penetrates thru the walls and they try to offset this with thicker walls.
Their oven panels do not have a thermal break on the edges so a lot of heat is transferred from the inside wall to the outside wall via the ends.
They are using galvanized sheeting for their walls instead of aluminized steel. Using aluminized steel has a higher resistance to heat transfer.
You will find the outside temperature of our 4” walls do not exceed those of any other manufacturers. In fact the top known oven manufactures also use an oven wall thickness of 4″ for similar ovens and temperatures.