Types Of Air Craft Paint Strippers

Every two years the surface paint on commercial and military aircraft must be stripped off. This is to enable checking of the condition of the aluminum substrata beneath the underlying layer of paint. It is important to check the condition to ensure operational status of the aircraft. Basically three types of aircraft paint strippers are used to depaint aircraft. They include physical, chemical, and thermal paint strippers.

Physical strippers are in the form of sand which is used to blast the aircraft surface to remove the paint. For this a sand blasting machine is used. The sand is made to impinge upon the surface with high force. It removes the paint on the surface. The time taken to strip the paint off with the sand blasting approach is less than with chemical strippers. However, this method is not preferred because of the comparatively greater cost of stripping.

Chemical strippers involve the use of chemicals to strip the paint from aircraft. This approach has been used for the last so many years to effectively strip paint from aircraft at low cost. Earlier methylene chloride was the most widely used chemical used for aircraft paint stripping. However, its con is that it is bad for the health of the workers who are employed for the paint stripping operation. Methylene chloride has also proved to be hazardous for the environment. It results in environmentally hazardous waste products.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has therefore banned the use of methylene chloride. It has also banned every other such chemical that proves to be a danger for the environment and/or the people. The exclusions list includes 189 chemicals.

Faced with this guideline from the EPA, a number of other chemicals have been developed by innovators that are biodegradable, environment-friendly, and also are safe for the paint stripping operators. Their use does not result in waste byproducts that are hazardous pollutants.

They include corn starch crystals and more or less benzyl alcohol based chemicals or other plastic media. All of these are also blasted on the painted surface. The operation is known as plastic media blasting (PMB). The only disadvantage of these environment and people friendly chemicals is that the process is comparatively more time taking than with the use of methylene chloride.

SWRI (South West Research Institute), based in San Antonio, Texas, has developed paint-stripping robots for the aircraft paint stripping operation. These computer-controlled robots are equipped with sensors and arms that have six degrees of freedom of movement.

The robots effectively blast environment-friendly PMB media to strip aircraft of its surface paint. It results in a quicker and more efficient stripping operation. This approach obviates the need to subject employees to health hazards involved in paint-stripping operations.

Thermal paint strippers are in the form of lasers that use searing heat to burn the paint off aircraft surfaces. Their effectiveness relies greatly on the experience of the operator. This paint stripping method is not very popular and efficient as are environment-friendly chemicals.
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