The In‐Situ Pretreatment of Aluminium Surfaces for Repainting

FOR whatever reason — general wear and tear, change of livery, or metallographic inspection procedures — aircraft are repainted. This is a fact of life that many would wish fictional, since the job is not one which could be described as the cleanest in the world, nor the most pleasant. A typical refurbishment process sequence could be simplified into eight steps: paint stripping; rinsing; cleaning; rinsing; pre‐treatment; rinsing; drying and repainting. This short article deals only with one aspect of the sequence — the pretreatment.