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heh..... where do I go on this one and not give up that I was a product of the late 70's/early 80's? 
The "grow" lights used in plant matter production are not close to an IR lamp....that works on a Ultra Voilet band as opposed to and Infrared spectrum. No use at all in powder coating unless you wish to give your parts a sun-tan. Let's focus on the lower level IR "french-fry" lamps instead,shall we?
Imagine that you can actually see Infrared waves for a second. (IR is not visible to the human eye. Just like Microwaves aren't sorta principal). Next, imagine that you can see a value to the light. Long wave has a nice slow moving pattern to it and short/medium wave has a quick penetrating pattern. Think of water at low pressure and then high-pressure coming from your sprinkler attached to a garden hose. Can you visualize it now? Excellent. The long wave will most definately generate heat to what it sees, but it's very minute spread over a greater distance. Slow wide ribbons of IR waves. Now, the short/medium wave form of this same spectrum moves at a higher rate of speed and is more focused. It moves quickly to what it "sees" and keeps bombarding it rapidly so that there's no loss of value within a calculated distance. This is the difference between the round "french fry" type of lamps and the round tube powder coating type of lamps. A different value if you will. Hence, the reason in cost AND purpose. If you had a powder coating lamp above your french fries, they would burn within a few minutes. Not good. The rapid moving penetrating waves would see what is in front of it and keep hammering it until the sugars of the food burnt. If you had the french fry bulb near your part, it would get warm, but never reach an operation temperature possible enough to cure the powder and heat up the metal enough. Sure..... I suppose you could hook maybe 50-60 of them together and perhaps EVENTUALLY get the job done....but that's too slow, and the cost of electricity and purchase price of the bulbs would set you back a tidy sum making the powder coating lamp cheaper.
People on this board know that I usually try to give the lowest cost/cheapest way out of any solution. After all....I know of nobody that grows money to be just spending on whatever they please. However, this is one of those areas where I say just buy the lamp and not try to fool with it. It's very purpose minded and there isn't any substitution for a spectrum like an IR lamp designed to be used industrially (like what Caswell offers here). Buy the Caswell lamp and it will do what it was intended to do. The only other alternative in this situation is get a bigger oven to get that coated part up to temperature. Hope that helps ya,bud.......Russ
The "grow" lights used in plant matter production are not close to an IR lamp....that works on a Ultra Voilet band as opposed to and Infrared spectrum. No use at all in powder coating unless you wish to give your parts a sun-tan. Let's focus on the lower level IR "french-fry" lamps instead,shall we?
Imagine that you can actually see Infrared waves for a second. (IR is not visible to the human eye. Just like Microwaves aren't sorta principal). Next, imagine that you can see a value to the light. Long wave has a nice slow moving pattern to it and short/medium wave has a quick penetrating pattern. Think of water at low pressure and then high-pressure coming from your sprinkler attached to a garden hose. Can you visualize it now? Excellent. The long wave will most definately generate heat to what it sees, but it's very minute spread over a greater distance. Slow wide ribbons of IR waves. Now, the short/medium wave form of this same spectrum moves at a higher rate of speed and is more focused. It moves quickly to what it "sees" and keeps bombarding it rapidly so that there's no loss of value within a calculated distance. This is the difference between the round "french fry" type of lamps and the round tube powder coating type of lamps. A different value if you will. Hence, the reason in cost AND purpose. If you had a powder coating lamp above your french fries, they would burn within a few minutes. Not good. The rapid moving penetrating waves would see what is in front of it and keep hammering it until the sugars of the food burnt. If you had the french fry bulb near your part, it would get warm, but never reach an operation temperature possible enough to cure the powder and heat up the metal enough. Sure..... I suppose you could hook maybe 50-60 of them together and perhaps EVENTUALLY get the job done....but that's too slow, and the cost of electricity and purchase price of the bulbs would set you back a tidy sum making the powder coating lamp cheaper.
People on this board know that I usually try to give the lowest cost/cheapest way out of any solution. After all....I know of nobody that grows money to be just spending on whatever they please. However, this is one of those areas where I say just buy the lamp and not try to fool with it. It's very purpose minded and there isn't any substitution for a spectrum like an IR lamp designed to be used industrially (like what Caswell offers here). Buy the Caswell lamp and it will do what it was intended to do. The only other alternative in this situation is get a bigger oven to get that coated part up to temperature. Hope that helps ya,bud.......Russ
yea I have had the same experience with the powder igniting. Only took doing it once to realize this is some dangerous stuff. 
As for using the heater I mentioned before, the powder is not being applied while the heater is on. I coat my larger parts than move them to a clean "powder free" area to be baked. There isn't any air born powder, only the powder that has been applied to the parts. I really see no different in using this type of heater than using a gas kitchen oven and have great results with using it. "Knock on wood" I have made the mistake of sticking my head over the top of the heater while in the middle of baking. BIG BIG mistake. It was so hot that I burnt off every piece of hair on my face. Including my nose hair. 
. heh heh heh
I should rephrase the earlier post to "When I finally started doing parts bigger than what my oven could handle" I never did anything larger than a valve cover for about the first 6-8 months of coating. I wanted to make absolutely sure that I could handle something as large as triple bar roll bar or car frame without screwing it up. Trust me, the peaking over the top won't be happening again any time soon. 
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