There's nothing in this article about why the containers need to be painted. Could the shipping companies just paint their logo on rather than painting the whole container and save a bunch of money?
My understanding is that shipping containers are usually made of COR-TEN steel, which forms a protective layer when it does rust (similar to the protective oxide layers that form on aluminum and stainless steel). But considering the containers are exposed to sea salt spray pretty much continuously, it makes sense that the additional protection of a coat of paint is necessary.
COR-TEN® steel requires alternating wet and dry cycles to form a properly adhered protective layer. Areas that have salt laden air, high rainfall, humidity, or persistent fog are typically not the proper environment for COR-TEN®.
Aware of that one. The trail bridge at Pilarcitos Creek on the California Coastal Trail in Half Moon Bay was made of unpainted Cor-Ten steel. That will not last in the coastal zone, where it never dries out. The bridge collapsed when park staff drove a tractor across it.[1] No injuries, but the heavily used trail was out for most of two years.
even if the containers are made with corten, it's not good for sea. The protective rust keeps getting washed off by the rain and the salt is too much for it to handle. Ends up rusting just as bad..
That's not why cars don't rust as much. Coatings have just gotten better and simulations have gotten better so engineers can know in advance that all the salty water that runs down the vehicle will be channeled through a few spots that will rust out in short order then do it anyway.
Galvanization was popular for a brief time while the industry was still trying to find replacements for lead in paint that didn't have crap performance.
Cold galvanization is expensive and involves nasty chemicals. Hot galvanization is cheaper but not as cheap as paint and involves equally nasty chemicals and molten metals.
Completely off topic but I don't understand why wikipedia doesn't simply select the desktop/mobile version of the website based on the user agent (with maybe the possibility to override the behaviour via a cookie if you really want to use the desktop version on mobile or vice-versa).
The number of times I have to manually edit a wikipedia URL every day to remove the ".m" part is getting frustrating. I'm sure there's a browser extension for that but really, I blame wikipedia's poor ergonomics.
My guess is that this is similar to StackOverflow switching to HTTPS [1]. Once you get to a certain size, something seemingly simple like turning on HTTPS or detecting desktops and redirecting comes with non-trivial problems. I can only imagine all the nuances that have to be addressed when you're serving the fifth largest site in the world [2].
Personally, I love that Wikipedia doesn't coerce you into the desktop or mobile version based on user agent. Being able to switch to the (somewhat more complete) desktop version when browsing on a phone is invaluable.
Sure, I mentioned that they could put an override, but sane defaults would be good. I don't know how many people actually mean to visit the mobile version of WP on the desktop when they follow a ".m" link, but I'd wager that it's pretty damn low.
Amongst other points, the article says that a water based paint takes 5 times longer to dry than the oil. From a production stand point you have a bottleneck. You now need 5x capacity to dry the containers to stay even with the normal production. Since I doubt they have vertical drying racks, production should slow due to that alone.
Either you increase the number of 'machines' (lines in this case) or you increase your drying area foot print to compensate.
Once you do the latter you can produce at the same rate assuming all products produced are identical) since you the ones coming out the dry end do so at the same speed as the input end.
Edit: This does assume production demand is constant, longer pipelines make responding to demand more difficult.
I am pretty certain paintings used for containers have little to none in common with paintings you get at the home improvement store but some observations I have made concerning water vs. oil based paintings:
* Water based paintings dry much faster than oil based paintings
* The durability is pretty much the same
* The scratch resistance of oil based paintings, once fully dried, is light years better than that of water based paintings.
In some aspects the green movement has brought us water based colors where you could water your home plants with but are inadequate for some (read: wide) range of application.
Oil based paint gets brittle and chips and it also yellows.
A downside I have noticed in water based paint is the manufacturers have started adding extra water, thinning the paint. Presumably selling more water is more profitable.
You don't need 5x capacity. This is latency vs bandwidth - you're going to delay the orders during the process switch 4x the drying period, but after that, your normal throughout I back up.
> There's nothing in this article about why the containers need to be painted. Could the shipping companies just paint their logo on rather than painting the whole container and save a bunch of money?
I read about so colled 'shunts'. Steelplates you put into the earth to protect your construction site for water. It is also partial used on a river side.
Those things are not painted and google told me that you can calculate how much is oxidized in a year.
I would really love to know how a shipping container is so much more fragile.
Perhaps it is not that relevant but in masses it makes a relevant amount of money. Like steel container 20 years and with color 25 years and that makes it just better.
