Saint-Gobain Surface Conditioning: Alumina Abrasive Particles for Automotive Polishing
Maintaining a vehicle’s high gloss finish requires more than intermittent treatment with a coating of wax. Clearcoat defects must be eliminated through automotive paint correction to reduce unseemly optical variations such as scratches, holograms, heavy water spots, and more. These must be removed from the vehicle body using a combination of an orbital or rotary buffer, with a suitable abrasive compound. Abrasive compounds and polishing solutions must be administered with distinct considerations for the vehicle itself, alongside the nature of the polish. Whether operating on recovered vehicles that are extremely damaged or the daily driver, it is important to bear in mind clearcoat composition, the extent of vehicular wear, and the aggressiveness of abrasive particles in the polishing product Alumina (Al2O3) particles are among the hardest engineered materials on the planet. They offer proven performance for defect removal in automotive polishing, with a range of customizable features for correcting paintwork to various degrees of severity. Saint-Gobain Surface Conditioning supplies abrasive particles suitable for every level of automotive paint correction. This blog post will outline our IDEAL range of abrasive solutions for automotive applications in more details.
DEAL Super: High Cut Abrasive Particles
In the automotive body shop, newly painted vehicle surfaces are leveled with fine sandpaper of 1000 – 1500 grit, imparting deep scratches that are difficult to remove without an aggressive cutting abrasive compound.
IDEAL Super offers unmatched cutting action, with multi-faceted alumina abrasive particles centered around a particle size distribution of 5 micrometers (μm). This powder product is the ideal abrasive solution for heavy body shop work.
IDEAL Cut: High Removal Rate Abrasive Solutions
The first step in automotive paint correction is typically the removal of visible surface defects such as texture imperfections. Very coarse sandpaper is used to eliminate phenomena such as orange peel, which arises as a mottling or bubble-effect in a paint job due to premature thinner evaporation. This often leaves scratches that must be eliminated with an abrasive polish. Correcting such defects requires abrasive particles that can impart high cutting action with good surface uniformity.
IDEAL Cut is a high removal rate abrasive (HRRA) that can be finely-tuned to enable abrasive formulations for distinct application requirements.
IDEAL Hybrid: Cutting-Edge Abrasive Solutions
Conventional automotive paint correction is sub-divided into three steps. These can be loosely classified by the defect severity, reducing from high through to light surface irregularities. Novel abrasive solutions have attempted to reduce the stages required to yield a high gloss finish from a severely weathered surface using a single product.
IDEAL Hybrid is a unique abrasive solution that exploits the morphing qualities of tailored alumina particles, offering an initial high cut that incrementally reduces to offer a fine gloss finish.
IDEAL Finish: Maximum Polish
The finishing polishing step of automotive paint correction involves the removal of light defects and the enhancement of the clearcoat gloss by ensuring good uniformity. This includes common weathering effects and surface contaminants that arise from regular road usage. and spotting from acidic rain can be remedied using an abrasive polish that prioritizes the surface finish.
IDEAL Finish is the perfect abrasive solution, providing outstanding swirl free surface uniformity with the highest gloss for the final step in automotive paint correction, your daily driver or a new model fresh off the assembly line.
Faster Cut and Better Finish with Saint-Gobain Surface Conditioning
Saint-Gobain Surface Conditioning specializes in the synthesis of custom alumina abrasive particles and slurries for any compound or polish. We provide abrasive particles based on our history and knowledge of physical property manipulation during synthesis and tight control of particle size distribution. We structure the abrasive particle morphology and eliminate ineffective particle sizes for cutting efficiency leading to optimal performance.
If you would like more information about our IDEAL automotive polishing particles or customizing our particles specific to your application, please do not hesitate to contact us