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Chrome-free Pretreatment on aluminium

I am looking for a chrome-free treatment on aluminium. One of our suppliers sent me a piece of information about E-CLPS 2100 (ester cross link polymer system). Has anybody here already used this treatment?

According to the commercials, it seems to be quite efficient for conversion coating as a passivation and adhesion layer before wet and powder paint and also environmentally friendly.
But what about the color of the substrate? The thickness of the coating?
Does it last long?
The cost is of course a key issue : comparing to other chrome free passivation treatment is it very expensive?

Well, to sum up, I would really appreciate any comments about the E-CLPS 2100. And if anyone knows a more efficient aluminium treatment, I'm interested for the input.

Nicolas Marcassus
product engineer - Nantes, France
April 4, 2011

Hi, Nicolas. All of the well-known aluminum pretreatment suppliers like Chemetall, Henkel, and Macdermid offer chrome-free treatment systems, as do some independents like Picklex® [affil links] and Sanchem and probably many more. Aluminum can also be phosphatized as a pretreatment. One issue that you may run into though is that some treatments are not approved for some applications; for example, I don't think any chrome-free treatment meets Mil-DTL-5541.

We welcome general comments about whether people use chrome-free vs. trivalent treatments, and generic discussions about different protection mechanisms like ster crosslink polymers, but we can't get into comparing various brands here. For one thing, it has sometimes led to shills posting with fictitious names :-)

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
April 5, 2011

There are a quite a number of brands supplying Cr-free chemicals approved by Qualicoat (A quality label organisation in Europe for powder coating / painting aluminium). Check their website.

Timur Ulucak
- Istanbul, Turkey
July 27, 2011

Hi,
We are using E-CLPS for pretreatment of aluminum parts. It is good product

Ashok Kashid
- Pune, Maharashtra, India
January 26, 2012

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