Powder coating for work chairs in clean rooms, ESD areas, and laboratories

A special powder coating ensures that a work chair for cleanrooms, laboratories and ESD areas meets the high requirements such as conductivity and resistance to abrasion or cleaning agents and disinfectants.

With the new "Texon", Interstuhl and its Bimos brand have launched a task chair for environments such as cleanrooms, laboratories and ESD areas. The chair meets high standards of functionality, hygiene and durability. A specially developed powder coating from FreiLacke plays a key role here, fulfilling both technical and design requirements.

Special products require special manufacturing conditions. This is particularly true in research, optical and laser technology, aerospace technology and other high-tech industries. These conditions can usually only be created in laboratories or clean rooms, where the air is kept free of dust and germs using filter systems. Other items require ESD conditions, i.e. protected areas in which electrostatic discharges are controlled in order to protect sensitive components from damage or destruction. Such complex working environments place the highest demands on safety, ergonomics and hygiene - requirements that also apply to the inventory and furniture. With the "Texon", Bimos has now launched a new chair on the market that not only meets cleanroom requirements, but also won several important design awards at its launch.

Interstuhl, a family-owned company from the Swabian Alb, has been developing and building chairs for the working world for six decades, while the Bimos brand specializes in task chairs for production, ESD areas, laboratories and cleanrooms. The chair crosses, chair frames and chair backrests of the new "Texon" task chair are made of die-cast aluminum and steel. As specified by the designers and product managers, these components were to be given a metal look in the colors white aluminum and black gray. In terms of the technical finish, Interstuhl opted for powder coating in order to achieve maximum functionality and surface resistance - a wet coating, as used for the prototypes, would only have been an emergency solution for the technical team, as it would not have produced the desired quality.

A suitable lacquer solution was required that would also meet the required cleanroom and ESD requirements. Because Interstuhl has enjoyed a very good and cooperative partnership with FreiLacke, another family-run company, for many years, the request went directly to the paint experts from the Black Forest. According to the company, they knew what Freilacke could do and several employees had already attended training courses in Döggingen.

As Ralf Kerner from FreiLacke industry sales reports, the development of the powder coating was quite challenging: "The components were coated with liquid coatings for sampling and were now to be given the same surfaces using powder coatings. Furthermore, the powder coatings had to be adjusted for die-cast aluminum with its outgassing properties." Due to the locations of use in cleanrooms, ESD, laboratories and production, many other characteristics were also required, such as a dissipative setting in accordance with DIN EN IEC 61340-5-1, a highly abrasion-resistant surface and high resistance to cleaning agents and disinfectants, some of which are very aggressive. In addition, there was no tolerance in terms of effect formation and surface finish. "Our service consists of offering our customers application solutions, even if they are very demanding and versatile, as in this case," says Kerner.

The developers at FreiLacke succeeded in creating a powder coating surface based on polyester resin that has the look and feel of a matt metal surface. The development took around a year, including some readjustments, as there were initially problems with the application behavior of the white aluminum. FreiLacke modified the paint in several steps in its own laboratory until the structure was completely convincing.

The Freiotherm PP5151OI1384 powder coating in white aluminum and the Freiotherm PP5061NRA721 in black-grey scored well in terms of surface hardness and mechanical resistance and also stood up well on the degassing substrate. The high-tech coatings are applied with corona guns and are easy to use; FreiLacke recommends a coating thickness of around 60-80 μm. For the new flagship Texon, the chair manufacturer says that it received very good advice regarding the powder and that the FreiLacke team's commitment was very high.

When it was unveiled at Orgatec 2024, the high-tech chair immediately caused a sensation: the Texon was awarded gold at the German Design Award 2025 for its outstanding product design. The gold award is the highest honor of the award and is only awarded to products that are considered groundbreaking for entire industries. The gold award underlines the innovative strength and high design quality of the Texon and sends a strong signal for the future of ergonomic working.

The chair also won the German Innovation Award in the #W2 "Excellence in Business to Business - Machines & Engineering" category. According to the jury, the Texon meets the challenges of complex working environments thanks to the combination of auto-motion technology for dynamic sitting, ESD-compliant features and a hygienically optimized design. The newly developed powder coatings are also likely to have played a small but decisive role in this. With them, the FreiLacke team has impressively demonstrated that it is already equipped for the working environments of tomorrow. (OM-1/26)