Paint Pretreatment
If your a manufacture of architectural aluminum, you know first-hand the importance of a quality finish for your products. To achieve the best possible paint finish, you can't skip steps or cut corners. While each step is important, one of the most important is the pretreatment process. It provides a solid foundation for all subsequent steps in a paint system.
At Superior Metal Technologies, for our paint systems, we fully immerse all aluminum metal material using our chrome phosphate pretreatment process. The process is designed to provide full coverage of all metal surfaces. It's used to clean and remove residue and debris as well as prepare and condition the metal to receive paint coatings.
As required by our primary paint suppliers, PPG, Sherwin Williams (Valspar) and Akzo Nobel, our pretreatment process meets AAMA 2603, AAMA 2604 and AAMA 2605 standards for architectural paint finishing.
Advantages
Chrome phosphate pretreatment is a conversion coating which increases the surface area and at the same time changes the chemical nature of the metal. This chemical change not only allows the paint to adhere better, it increases the corrosion resistance of the metal allowing for a longer life for your finished product. When scratches or paint chips do occur, they spread less and rust or corrode slower.
- Clean metal surfaces, removing residue and debris
- Paint adheres better to metal surfaces
- Painted surfaces last longer
- Enhances rust and corrosion resistance
Basic Process
At each step in the pretreatment process, parts are visually inspected and if necessary sent back through the previous step. This assures that material is pretreated properly prior to the application of any paint coating.
- Load material in to cleaning baskets (all metal surfaces are spaced to prevent touching of any other metal surface)
- Fully immerse in cleaning solution tank
- Fully immerse in rinse solution tank
- Fully immerse in chrome phosphate conversion tank
- Fully immerse in chrome rinse tank
- Move material to the dry-off oven and wait until completely dry
- Unload material and move to the paint racking area