James

American Aviation, Inc. Brooksville - Tampa Bay Regional Airport (BKV)

Thanks carusoam... This process doesn't add additional costs to the job other than minor variances for product and materials. It replaces etch/alodine, but is much less corrosive/abrasive. The devil is in the details, like after the conversion process I describe above the airframe has got to be treated as a sterile substrate. We use a mesh coverall to prevent skin oils, deodorants & fabric softener residue in clothing from fouling the substrate while masking off for prime. Also, nobody is allowed to wear cologne, hair product, etc. Smokers are made to wash their hands and forearms after breaks prior to donning latex gloves and working on the plane after the conversion process We are competitive with any other proper paint shop and we are a repair station with a full structural and avionics shop in addition to our paint and upholstery operation, so much of our work is post-repair/post mods paint jobs that get included in the package price. For specific pricing your scheme has to be decided, but an approximate base price would be in the $14,500 to $14,800 range for an overall solid color (non-metallic) w/ basic accent stripes. This varies by what is found after strip. I've stripped a plane before, 4 place single, and found 300+ hail dents that had been previously filled. Re skinning was in order because the feather sanding on all of those dents by the previous painter decreased the skin thickness to just above minimum, resulting in an inability to just refill them. When you are doing a pre-buy, you should be looking at the interior skin surfaces for evidence of dents that have been filled and not visible on the exterior. These may be considered pre-existing for insurance purposes if they are uncovered down the road during a re-paint and you'll be out-of-pocket for the extra cost of repair or re-skin. Which brings up another issue. All old bodywork should be removed to check for corrosion. This must be handled so as not to cause skin thinning. And bodywork should never be done on bare aluminum. It should be primed first, in the area of the bodywork, and then sealed prior to overall priming to ensure the skin under the filler is protected with an appropriate Zinc/chrome epoxy primer. This includes all new hdw, stainless and structural, windows sealed, etc. If you're using a shop that does not remove evrything that is not riveted on, your not getting a proper service. Of course overhead makes the price vary between shops, but you should not be looking for a cheap job unless you are flipping the plane and not worrying about warranty. Minimum warranty should be a minimum of one year. PPG Aerospace offers 3 and 5 year warranty's for adhesion, gloss and color fade based on the paint system you select. Workmanship should be at least 6 months, plenty of time for you to find issues like runs, orange peel, over spray, etc. Make sure you look at your plane extensively in a hangar with good lighting. Once you get it out of the glare of the sun, a lot of detail comes out about workmanship. Get on your knees and look at the surface from varying angles. Pay close attention to areas of intersections like wing roots. improper paint application will cause excessive paint build up in these areas by improper overlapping of wet edge. And, eddy currents or turbulence from the paint gun can cause the paint to go thin in other areas like this, causing thin film build which results in orange peel, but more importantly, a loss of flexibility where peeling and easy chipping can occur from impacts with air debris. Also, loosen a few screws and look for indentations that would indicate the plane was reassembled before the paint cured out enough. This will cause peeling around screw heads.

Sorry for the wordcount, but I felt this info may help when considering paint processes. We use Eldorado PR5044 paint stripper as specified by PPG Aerospace. Eldorado PR-5044 is the newest generation, nondrying, peroxide-activated paint and primer remover for removal of polyurethane and epoxy paint systems. PR-5044 is environmentally compliant, contains no chlorinated solvents and is the only peroxide stripper approved by Boeing. It is approved by or conforms to: BAC 5725, DPM 5549, Boeing D6-17487, Douglas CSD #1, Embraer, WR-ALC Purchase Description, ATR. A single application of the PR5044 stripper will strip two coats of paint with an additional application possibly necessary to fully strip the airframe if the plane has had previous paint jobs done without stripping to bare metal. There is no abrasive agitation needed for this stripper, it is non-corrosive, and is washed off with fresh water and an alkaline soap to neutralize any remaining active peroxide residue . The airframe is unmasked and rewashed, with close attention paid to seams and other areas where residual stripper residue may linger to ensure there is no chance of contamination of the new coatings. 1. After allowing the airframe to fully dry we remove all access panels begin removing the remaining paint from masked areas. Again, this is where we like to point out where the proper process diverges from the norm because of diligence in ensuring the least destructive methods possible when preparing your airframe. We remove the remaining paint from the aircraft skin using 3M Scotchbrite products ONLY. No conventional sandpaper is used for paint removal from aircraft skin after stripping so there is no chance of inadvertently reducing the thickness of structural components such as rivet heads, window openings, etc. or altering the profile of the existing aircraft skin which reduces the aesthetics in addition to reducing the service life of the skin and making it susceptible to corrosion because of Alclad abrasion. I am currently painting a Conquest that was damaged by another "paint shop" to the tune of $275,000.00. Our structural repair department had to re-skin a considerable portion of this airframe. 2. The next step of the process is another area where many shops using "old methods" botch the aircraft preservation portion of the painting process. As specified by PPG Aerospace and in accordance with current Boeing practices, we use a conversion process in preparation for primer that does not use acid etching or an alodine oxidizing agent. The old method of preparing and converting aircraft aluminum and magnesium for priming consisted of treating the aircraft skin with acid to remove contamination and then treating with Alodine. The problem with the acid process is somewhat self explanatory because you cannot absolutely ensure complete neutralization of the acid that may have crept into the seams and airframe interior cavities, thus leaving a corrosive to sit in the lap seams and every other orifice where it will react, especially when exposed to moisture from rain or even just high humidity. This exposes the airframe to numerous opportunities for future corrosion issues. And, aside from the fact that Alodine is a Hexavalent Chromium wich is a known carcinogen, it is an oxidizer. What many do not realize about Alodine is that the application of it is to start a controlled oxidation (surface corrosion) and then stop this process by sealing it with primer. The oxidation of the aircraft skin is to provide a surface condition the primer can adhere to by creating a thin layer of oxidized aluminum. The same is true of the process for magnesium. After application of the oxidizer, you have 48 hours to seal it off with primer or the oxidation process will progress too far, resulting in adhesion failure of the primer due to exfoliation of the oxidation layer, or worse, the development of corrosion under paint. This often happens when an aircraft is acid etched and alodined and then allowed to set too long, awaiting primer, because of improper management of the paint shop work schedule. This is often evident when "bubbled" looking paint is seen with corrosion underneath and no damage to the paint that would explain the development of the corrosion. Or, the aircraft skin had other contamination from traditional corrosion inhibitors due to improper surface preparation. We use the PreKote system of airframe skin conversion. PreKote is non-toxic, biodegradable, and NON-CORROSIVE with a pH of 10-11.5. Chromated conversion coatings (such as alodine) are highly corrosive acids (pH of 1.3–3.0). PreKote also will not cause embrittlement or induce Cadmium leaching on Cadmium-plated metals and is approved on all composites and all metals, including magnesium and titanium. After passing numerous paint system specification tests by the US Air Force, Aerospace OEM's, and USAF flight-testing, the USAF specified PreKote as the only replacement for chromated conversion coatings in Tech Order 1-1-8, the umbrella Technical Order for aircraft painting. PreKote has been qualified and is being used on the fleets operated by Continental Airlines, Air Canada, Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Parcel Service (UPS), and American Eagle among others. In addition, OEM's including Dassault Aviation and Mooney Airplane Company have approved and implemented PreKote for production aircraft. 3. After the conversion coating, the aircraft is masked and primed using the PPG Aerospace primer appropriate for your coatings system selection. Once again, this is another critical aspect of the aircraft painting process that is often mishandled by conventional paint shops, resulting in inferior coatings performance or outright failure of the paint system. All coatings have a period of chemical activity, meaning that even after drying to the touch the coating is "cooking" at the molecular level. Primer has a window of chemical activity, typically 72 hours for our product, in which the topcoat must be applied to achieve a chemical bonding between the two coatings. On numerous coatings systems this window may be considerably less. If the topcoat is not applied during this window, the primer must be mechanically abraded in order to get mechanical adhesion of the topcoat with the primer. This causes two major issues. First, the abrasion of the primer defeats what it's designed to do; protect the aircraft skin. All coating are designed to be applied at a minimum dry film thickness. This optimal thickness provides corrosion protection and flexibility. Without maintaining this minimum thickness, the primer can and will prematurely fail. Second, it is impossible to fully abrade every little bit of surface area like tight skin seams and around rivets. This causes weak bonding areas between the primer and topcoat which will lead to delamination between coatings. This additional abrasion process also allows the possibility of contaminating the primer with skin oils, air tool lubricants, etc. Hitting this window of molecular activity ensures that EVERYWHERE the paint flows and is in contact with the primer there is a chemical bonding of the coatings. In essence, the topcoat and primer become inseparable because they have become one coating at a molecular level. Hope this sheds some light on what you "should be getting in addition to a good "looking" paint job.