Oxsilan Pretreatment Revisited

In my August 2011 column, I responded to a question regarding the benefits of Chemetall’s Oxsilan pretreatment process versus more conventional iron and zinc phosphate pretreatments. There were some potential benefits that I had outlined, although I was contacted by Chemetall product manager Gary Nelson who provided further information beyond what I described to the reader. I want to thank Gary for reading and especially providing the additional detail on Chemetall’s process.

Below are some specific updates from Gary regarding the Oxsilan paint pretreatment technology that was not covered in that previous column:

• In recent testing and in customer experiences, we’ve had success using Oxsilan in good-quality tap water as well as reverse osmosis water, so the deionized water restriction has been lifted.
• We have a titration control for Oxsilan, so a spectrophotometer isn’t needed (although we use one for another “advanced pretreatment” product called Gardobond EPP).
• We continue to test with the military and have had some recent good results.
• Many of our customers have found significant savings in water consumption.

Hopefully this will add some additional information for those considering this chemistry in their pretreatment line.