[Closed] Aluminium frame- acid bath or shotblast?

[url= http://www.customcolour.co.uk/coloured.htm ]this too rich??[/url]

Champagne Gold

I'd go with bead blasting.

shot's a bit harsh.

Crushed walnut shells is supposed to be the best but I'd go for chemical dip. It's harder to mess up th frame if you're not quite concentrating than blasting

Whats the diff? i.e. any? (Chemical bath or acid bath)- same thing??

I mentioned in a recent thread that a customer of ours is having to go to court as a local engineering company has effectively destroyed his Orange 5 by bead-blasting it.I've blasted wheels using nut shell in the past, and this also marks the surface, but whether it's enough to cause problems I don't know.

Baths probably the best thing then as the bottom shock mount prongs are quite delicate looking compared.

An acid bath will be just that, a big bath of acid. A chemical bath is very vague. Could be acid, basic/alkaline (caustic to laymen) or a solvent based one. Might be worth asking. Both acid and basic baths will attack the metal but it is a question of how much and how quickly.

Blasting is an option. I don't know how specialised the walnut shell is. Bead blasting might be two harsh but I think you can tune it by picking the shot and pressure. Loads of other options, dry ice blasting, sponge blasting, grit(!) blasting etc. The two problems are that you might blast straight through the frame (The other option is that you will bend/deform the frame or tubes. We use 4mm steel or thicker for our stuff. Anything less than this is noticeably warped after blasting. Although my experience extends to chilled iron grit which is severe.

You should speak to some people who might be able to do it.

I wouldn't even go with walnut shells. I'd go with soda blasting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodablasting

But acid probably safer.

in one of my many jobs on tthe past, i used to be a shotblast operative.
we built trains and did old trains up.
to remove the paintwork layer by layer we used to blast it with bicarbonate of soda in a water jet.
this allowed you to take layer by layer off the panels allowing us to leave the original primer/base colour on.

Just stripped my aluminium frame using POR15 stripper- bit fiddly but three coats and it's back to base aluminium - cost about £15. Just waiting for a cutting compound to arrive to start the polishing - a few scratches need buffing our before making it shiny.

just spray on?

Years ago during Summer I worked at a very large Engineering company and I was tasked with using some sort of high-powered (petrol-powered generator?) jetwash to clean down the steel racking of all residual oil. Anyway there was a works van parked a fairish distance (or so I thought) away and I decided to give its side a quick-wash.

It took off the paint in a long slash down the side 😯

I wouldn't bother doing it my self, you're pretty much guaranteed to get a better & cheaper finish at the painters, plus whatever you do they'll probably dip it anyway to get rid of surface contamination between you stripping it and them painting. Otherwise you'll be back in a few weeks complaining about the finish.

My next colour will probably be cream or dark blue as I can get it done at work.

I nitromored a frame once - did it in the back garden in the snow/winter. I'm sure that the extreme cold slows down the seperation process. It took BLOODY ages

cruzheckler - Member

just spray on?

If that was re the POR15 then yes, you get a tin and a pump sprayer (you MUST clean the sprayer or it clogs) transfer the desired amount and off you go - took an afternoon to strip the frame from this:

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to this:

[img] [/img]

Where can you buy it from (POR15) and is it better than Nitromores?