Spray Shop

The final stage of production falls to our spray shop, where our team of 3 sprayers have over 40 years of combined spraying experience between them. They coat the cabinet in several lightly sprayed layers of paint, giving it a long-lasting durable coat. As well as a water-based paint, we can spray polyurethane for a slightly longer-lasting more durable finish. Our team take great pride in getting a professional and consistent finish on all our cabinets, a process we have perfected over the years.

Every coating specification begins with a conversation about the cabinet’s intended use. A touring cabinet that will spend years being loaded into trucks, stacked in warehouses, and set up in venues across the world needs a finish that can absorb impact without cracking, resist abrasion without showing wear, and maintain its appearance through hundreds of handling cycles. A textured polyurea or polyurethane coating is typically specified for this application: tough, repairable, and visually forgiving.

An installation cabinet has different requirements. It may be visible in a venue, a house of worship, a conference facility, or a retail environment where appearance matters as much as performance. High-gloss lacquers, satin finishes, or client-specified colours and textures are applied to a standard that would satisfy a furniture maker, because in many installations that is exactly what the cabinet needs to be: a piece of furniture that happens to contain professional audio components.

Surface preparation before the first coat is critical. Any dust, oil, or contamination on the Baltic Birch surface will compromise adhesion. Panels are cleaned, and the surface is prepared to accept the primer coat. The primer itself is selected to be compatible with both the Baltic Birch substrate and the topcoat system. Incompatible primers are one of the most common causes of coating failure in wood products, and we have eliminated that risk through years of testing and supplier relationships.

Multiple coats are applied with sanding between passes. Each coat builds the film thickness, and each sanding pass creates the surface key for the next coat to bond to. Rushing this process, skipping a sanding pass, or applying the next coat before the previous one has fully cured will eventually show as a defect. We do not rush it.

The spray environment is controlled for temperature and humidity. Both affect how coatings flow, level, and cure. A finish applied in uncontrolled conditions can orange-peel, sag, or fail to cure to its specified hardness. Our spray facility maintains consistent conditions throughout the coating process.

Acoustic damping is a property that most people do not associate with coatings, but it matters. The coating system adds mass and stiffness to the cabinet walls, which alters their resonant behaviour. In some designs, this is desirable and is factored into the acoustic modelling. In others, the coating system needs to be as acoustically neutral as possible. We discuss this with the client during specification and select the system accordingly.

Every coated cabinet is inspected for finish quality, film thickness, and adhesion before it moves to final inspection. The spray shop is not the end of the process, but it is the stage that the client’s customer will see and judge first.