What does dilute hydrochloric acid do to aluminum? Would it remove paint and leave a nice shiny surface or would it eat holes and leave a mess? How about nitric acid?
And another question...can either of these acids be used in any form to clean rusty steel in preparation for painting?
Many years ago I used a fairly strong caustic to remove paint from both steel and aluminum. But . . . I don't remember specifically the condition of the Al afterwards. The caustic we employed was (normally) used to clean molds which had been used for molding rubber/resin combos into clutch facings. Te caustic also did an excellent job or removing the wax residue of the mold release.
As I remember it, the Al was NOT pitted, and produced a nice finish when re-painted.
Carl Sachs
PS - After the caustic dip, the both the Al and Fe were steam cleaned.
snipped-for-privacy@here.now wrote:
Why use acid? All you have to attack is the polymer binder, for which methylene chloride works great.
Cheers,
Phil Hobbs
Acid pickling is a term for the use of acid so clean up oxidized steel. HCl, somewhat diluted, was what I used many years ago when I did it, once and only once.
You can do a search for "Acid Pickling Steel" if you want to know more about it.
Jim
Commercially there is/are polymeric beads that are used to "sand blast" aluminum to remove paint without harming the metal. Frank
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