NIC cerakote industries has a very good series of videos on YouTube about using their products. Lots of good info in them about what settings and techniques to use.
I would definitely recommend against doing heat cure cerakote in a inhouse oven. The fumes given off by NIC industries cerakote products are no joke. They have plenty of warnings on their labels about not breathing this stuff. At a minimum apply cerakote in the garage with adequate ventilation. It will give me an instant headache if I get a whiff of it without a respirator on.
I did cerakote for a few years. If you follow their preparation guidelines you get a great product. You also need a lot of other things — Blast cabinet with clean media, air compressor rated for spraygun with inline driers supplying filtered air, HIGH quality spraygun like an Iwatta, (devilbiss is entry level at best), separate wash and rinse buckets for the acetone baths, lots of acetone, vertical oven if you are doing parts over 18” long. Lots of other small expendable supplies like bottle filters, paper masking, high temp tape, nitrile gloves etc etc. Pretty much the same amount of equipment and prep that is needed for doing car parts.
Somebody will probably come along and say you don’t need all that stuff, that you will be fine just sanding or scuffing the parts with scotchrite, wash it in the sink and spray it with a preval spraypack from home depot and it will be good to go. To that I say substandard prep equals substandard results. Do you really think a cheap spraypack aerosol can will have proper droplet size and pattern control? You going to get that hidden pocket of grease in a hard to reach corner with a quick wash and rinse in the kitchen sink after a fast passover with some sandpaper? There is also skill involved. I have had to totally redo parts over a few times for proper results. One project I had to do 3 times before it was right.
I have since stopped doing finish work. Cerakote has a limited shelf life even if left unopened, it will start to separate and clump and will not remix. Got tired of having bottles go bad, too much $$$ to have it spoil for the low volume work I was doing. Now I would just take a project to a respectable cerakote applicator
