Case Study 1

High-performance anticorrosive coating on aluminum

spraying paint car bumper

1. Situation

This customer manufactures ambulances for the North American market and also affects the international market.
Their major problem was the premature corrosion and delamination of about 7% of their units. They wanted a rate below 1%.
situation car img
Exigence du client img

2. Customer requirements

A “5B” or perfect adherence and a conclusive salt spray test (ASTM B -117) for 3,000 hours or more.

3. Analysis

  • In order to offer sufficient corrosion protection, the client had to use 2 methods of chemical pre-treatment since the primer they were using was not designed to adhere directly to aluminum.
  • Moreover, like most traditional epoxy primers, it offered a very poor anticorrosion performance without the use of Alodine.
analyse img
The major problem with the use of a chemical treatment such as Alodine which is used manually in that there are too many variables change with a manual application (versus a constant automated application), leading to delamination problems and premature corrosion.

4. Our recommendation

COLOR 3i proposed an aircraft-type epoxy primer which has been designed to adhere directly to aluminum without any chemical treatment.
In addition, this primer provides an anticorrosive performance (ASTM B -177) of 3000 hours at 0.5 mil dry which is required by Bombardier and other aircraft manufacturers.
For an ambulance, we determined that an average thickness of 1.2 mil dry was needed, which resulted in a salt spray test over 5,000 hours.
recommandations img

5. Results

COLOR 3i not only eliminated unnecessary production steps and accelerated productivity, but we have also reached a near 0% rate of delamination and premature corrosion.
Scroll to Top