Went to visit Pro-Tek today for powdercoating
I have been searching for a new place to take batches of metal parts for powder coating ever since my crazy experience with R&B in Chicago. Lets just say that personal care and concern for vintage parts was not on the menu. Plus the move out to the suburbs makes a trip into the city a pain. After some online searching and some old school phone book work I decided to give Pro-Tek in Joliet a try.
The Pro-Tek website gives the impression that small jobs are welcome, perfect for odd lots of arcade parts. They also do media (sand, etc) blasting on site, which is a huge bonus. Sometimes I just don’t have time to strip all my parts down to bare metal. I talked with the owner, Jay, about my project and he agreed to take a look. Pro-Tek is located in a little industrial complex near Joliet Junior College. The building was a nice new industrial condo and Jay was hard at work when I pulled up. Jay runs a small operation, so care for vintage parts wouldn’t be an issue, its the norm. I pulled out my bin of parts and we discussed finishes and costs. I decided to go with one color/texture for all the parts to keep cost down. The job will take 2 to 3 weeks since there is some blasting involved. For now, here are some pics from the shop, thanks to Jay for letting me take these.
I took a careful inventory of all my parts before dropping them off. I just took digital pictures of each part so i could keep track. It’s easy to forget something when you have 30 to 40 different parts being worked on all at one time. Once I get the parts back I will follow up with a few before and after images, good or bad. Stay tuned!
Tags: powdercoating, Restorations
September 15th, 2008 at 5:22 am
You noted about R&B, but I couldn’t find an an entry about them. What happened?
September 15th, 2008 at 11:18 am
@Peale: R&B powdercoating was a place I used to live real close by to. I had found them on my companies vendor list and thought I’d check the place out. Located at Pershing and Western Ave in the McKinley Park area, the factory building was huge. The place was run down, dirty and geared towards running large batches of parts. Let’s just say that they weren’t going ISO 9000 anytime soon. The boss agreed to run my small box of parts since I’d be paying in cash, of course. I dropped the parts off and about 4 days later got a call that they could be picked up. When I showed up I was directed through the plant to the pickup area where to my dismay I saw a box of my parts on the floor about 10 ft from the end of the oven line. The guy taking the parts off was tossing them into the box and not always on the mark. Then I find that about 1/4 of my parts were missing and nobody had a clue. I had to walk around looking through the completed parts “bins” to find my crap. Still couldn’t find two pieces which were believed to have fallen off the line as they passed through the oven. They clean out the oven once I week I’m told, come back then. WTF? I paid my $ and got out of there. I never did get those two parts back.
September 16th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Wow! That’s awful. I’d definitely bitch a storm about it, and at the very least demand a discount.