As part of the Society Of Collision Repair Specialist education series, Repairer Driven Education, at SEMA 2014 3M held an informational session on the myths and facts around repairing Aluminum panels.
3M Aluminum Repair: Separating the Facts from the Myths
This session will examine and challenge some of the myths and conventional wisdom for aluminum repair in the collision repair shop. We will address issues such as corrosion, repair vs. replace, adhesive bonding, heating during repairs, and separate fact from myth.
Alright today at SEMA I covered the common repair myths with aluminum repairs. So I really want to archive today is trying to dispel some other some the hyper some of the myths that are out there concerning aluminum repairs. For example a lot of people that think that you can't put body filler directly on aluminum panels which isn't true. Use the correct body fillers premium fillers others no problem all fillers that that we use. For example are tested on different substrates such as aluminum some the other things I discussed was the necessity of corrosion protection on aluminum. A lot of people mistakenly think because it's aluminum it doesn't rust that you don't need corrosion protection but there are a number of types of corrosion that can occur even on aluminum panels. A couple the other things I talked about were properly fixed during structural panels offsetting rivets and temporary rivets in place so that as you bond and rivet panels together that the panels don't move and elongate holes or set the rivets incorrectly. So in general the program is about solving some other problems. Talking about how aluminum is different and steel why that's important to repairs for technicians how to deal with some of those differences. And of again trying to bring some of the level hype down that it's a different substrate bought it's not the end of the world when we start work on aluminum. The shops will go through that learning curve but eventually it'll be an easy process. So the one demonstration I did was to show how aluminum could be easily misshapen or panels can be destroyed if proper repair techniques are not use. So what I did was took our small piece of aluminum coupon and placed on a model dolly and took a hammer and hammer right onto the to the aluminum panel with the dolly directly behind it. What happens when you do that is because the aluminums softer material actually stretch kinda pancake I'll that coupon where when you when you go to bend that it will have an oil can in there where you can pop out because that material has stretched out. So the proper technique is to use the dolly next to the repair area instead of directly behind it. So that was my demonstration today. So that was a summary for today's program hope everybody enjoyed it.
