I use the air dry cerakote. Most of what I do are for my AK builds and I don't have an oven that will fit a barreled AK receiver. If you don't already have the equipment like a blast cabinet, good compressor with oil/water separator and a good regulator and whatnot, it can be expensive. (I own a commercial/industrial painting company so I didn't have anything in the way of equipment costs) You can use HVLP or a good quality airbrush to apply the coating. Of all the gun coatings, I'd say that Cerakote is the most difficult to apply simply because the coating is not as forgiving of mistakes and you really need to thoroughly degrease and prep before you coat. Preparation is everything when it comes to cerakote, or any high-performance, specific use coating for that matter. I believe that some of the other coatings call for a spraydown or something light like that to degrease. With Cerakote, it's pretty important to actually soak/bath and scrub the parts to be coated. To degrease I use acetone. (I built a tank out of stainless sheet steel specifically for this.) If you have the proper equipment and you follow the instructions/tech. data sheet, you can do an excellent job.
Here is my process:
1. Completely disassemble weapon
2. Soak in acetone bath for 10-15min, let air dry. From this point on, I only handle the parts wearing rubber/latex/nitril gloves so I don't regrease what I've degreased with my grubby hands.
3. If you have an oven big enough, heat the (metal) parts to around 250-300. If there's still grease it will bleed and you will see it. (Repeat degrease if there is)
4. Blast parts. I use 120grit Aluminum Oxide at 90psi. It doesn't matter if it's white or brown aluminum oxide. You want to use this type and size media because it creates a good blast profile on the metal, which you need for your cerakote to adhere to. (I believe the PDS calls for a 1mil, 1/1000th of an inch, blast profile) It's very important for you to do this in a blast cabinet or outdoors WITH a respirator because you don't want blast media deposits in your lungs.
5. Use compressed air run through an oil/water filter to blow off excess dust.
6. Repeat Step 2
7. Repeat Step 3
8. Hang parts. For a parts tree, I use a rolling clothing rack with hooks and thin flexible wire. For screws, I put a hook on a couple blocks, drilled a couple pilot holes in them, partially screw the screws in the blocks, and hang the blocks on the parts tree.
9. Coat. I use an airbrush set at 15 to 20psi. First I run Acetone through the airbrush. (A Badger 155 with a medium tip/spray pattern that I have for scale modeling...another one of my obsessions) It's better to go lighter than heavier. If you go too heavy, your cerakote will run. Practice on a piece of scrap metal or whatnot to get your technique down. Remember to wear your respirator. Atomized chemicals are bad for the lungs.
10. Clean your airbrush/hvlp gun with acetone then run mineral spirits through it. If you let your gun sit with acetone, it will degrade the seals. You use Acetone for cleaning when it comes to cerakote because that's the solvent in that particular coating. (In a paint or coating there is a solvent, binder, and pigment)
11. Since I use the air dry cerakote (Don't have access to an oven big enough to fit my rifle builds), I let sit and cure for at least 5 days, as per the cerakote PDS, before I handle/assemble.
You don't have to degrease twice. I just do because I don't like greasy blast media floating around my blast cabinet and it doesn't hurt, and only takes 20min more.
If you need pictures of my setup or of the process, please PM me. I have an AK receiver that I need to do sometime so I could do pictures when I do that.
The reason why I use a double action airbrush is that I can control the spray pattern and the coating application...it may be a tad bit slower than a detail hvlp gun but you're less prone to creating runs.
Oven Cure is more durable as far as impact and abrasion testing is concerned. Air dry is really mean't for suppressors, MG barrels, as it has a heat rating of 1200f. It's also good for optics/ polymer or any other thing that you wouldn't want to be putting in an oven. Here is the link to Cerakotes documentation/specs/instruction/MSDS/etc.:
http://www.cerakoteguncoatings.com/resource/downloads/
