Metal finishing Q&As since 1989
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Aluminum Soda Can Paint Removal
Q. My company is using standard aluminum soda cans for one of our applications. This is for small quantity orders, and our customer has approved us using these. It's great to "recycle" these cans, but is there an "easy" way to remove the paint, and prep them for our painting process? These cans are subjected to around 600 °F on a regular basis in their application. We've been just spray painting them now, but I'd like to strip the old paint before adding a new coat because, (correct me if I'm wrong) I feel the paint will adhere better.
Craig BodieBoco Productions - Columbia, South Carolina
2003
A. Hi Craig,
A solvent-based paint stripper may be able to remove the old coating from the cans.
In general, the new coat of paint will stick better to the metal surface than it will to the old paint. But this will be dependent on how you prepare the metal surface. Do you have the ability to clean the cans and apply a conversion coating at your facility? If not, you may be better off just recoating the cans and not bothering to strip off the old paint.
- Naperville, Illinois
2003
Q. I need "blank" upainted soda cans for a project. I wanted to know if the paint remover worked well for you.
vanessa j.student - Portland Oregon
2004
A. I found a site that suggested boiling it in baking soda [on eBay or Amazon] and water. I tried it and it does weaken the paint but you still have to scrub with steel wool, etc. There was also a site that demonstrated using baking soda to essentially "sand" blast the paint and it worked well, but was slow on the demo.
Cheryl Tarkington- Stone Mountain, Georgia USA
June 21, 2014
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