Some of the world’s most well-respected and well-known surface experts are at your disposal.
Many of the cleaning and pretreatment systems on the market today were originally developed for steel. Thankfully, we have a thorough understanding of how these treatments can be optimised for aluminium. What’s more, we’re able to examine your product surface after each process step to make sure both the cleaning and pretreatment are working properly.
We can do this for aluminium sheet, extrusions and all other product forms. We’ll help you choose the correct system and show you how to apply it so it works. This is particularly important for automotive products because the most difficult acceptance tests are to do with bond durability and filiform corrosion.
The corrosion properties of aluminium sheet are controlled by the presence of deformed surface layers. Controlling corrosion is almost always related to selecting the appropriate cleaning and pretreatment systems to remove these layers. Almost 20 years of research into aluminium corrosion has given us a deep understanding of the subject. This means we can get to the bottom of any corrosion issues you may experience and help you select the best surface treatment system for your products.
Our extensive in-house characterisation and analysis capabilities will get to the root cause of any material problem, including corrosion. We’re able to carry out filiform corrosion testing, galvanic corrosion testing and various other standard corrosion tests.
Aluminium pretreatment – a brief overview
Anodised aluminium as a catalyst support
An overview of aluminium surface analysis
Understanding your aluminium oxide surface
Why polymer coatings are a necessary evil
Aluminium surface cleaning – a brief overview
Measuring aluminium surface cleanliness by microscopy
Total reflectance and colour measurements to evaluate aluminium etching
Why paint sticks – it’s all about the pretreatment
Aluminium Surface Analysis: high resolution low-kV SEM