What You Should Know About Removing Ceramic Coating During Your Auto Body Technician Career
A ceramic coating is a chemical polymer solution that’s applied to the exterior of a vehicle to protect the paint from any damage. It’s a very handy protective coating that offers many benefits: it’s extremely strong, it looks great, and it’s great at protecting the layer of paint underneath. Unfortunately, one downside to ceramic coatings is that they don’t last forever. If a client rolls into your shop and their car has a ceramic coating on it, there could be a chance that that coating needs to be removed and replaced.
So, how do you remove a ceramic coating? The removal process can be performed using several different methods, two of which are presented here. Continue reading to find out what they are!
As an Auto Body Technician, You’ll Want to Test the Ceramic Coating First
Removing a ceramic coating from a vehicle isn’t a simple process. Ceramic coatings bond to the body paint of a vehicle, and that bond can be a pretty strong one. So, how do you break that bond and remove the ceramic coating as an auto body technician? The first thing you’ll want to do is test the coating’s durability by rinsing the car, applying car shampoo, and using a clay bar to remove any dirt that’s on the surface of the wax layer. Sometimes a really old and worn down coating can come off a little bit during this process. However, if the ceramic coating wasn’t easily removed during this initial attempt, then you’ll have to use polish or chemical cleaning to remove it.
Put Your Polishing Mastery to the Test
Throughout your professional career in auto body work, you’ll notice that machine polishing is one effective method to use for ceramic coating removal. Polishing requires you to use a good amount of lubricant and sandpaper on the vehicle’s exterior surface. Start polishing away, until you see that ceramic coating starts to wear off from the high spots. You’ll then proceed by bringing the heavy-duty stuff in to get your polishing finished up. You can use a padded orbital polisher with a polishing compound to apply the compound and spread it around the surface of the vehicle. This will help to manually scrape away the ceramic coating.
Count on Your Degreasers to Get the Job Done
Becoming an auto body technician means you’ll know the ins and outs of the trade. For many professionals, if polishing isn’t an option for removing a car’s ceramic coating, then a chemical solution could also be an option. Alkaline-based degreasers are the ceramic coating’s kryptonite. Degreasers tend to break down a ceramic coating’s bond with the exterior paint on a vehicle, allowing for a simple removal process. However, this option isn’t for the faint of heart. That’s because any mistakes could potentially cause damage to the paint underneath the ceramic coating. With experience, you’ll know how much degreaser to use on a vehicle’s surface, so that it doesn’t cause any harm to the rest of the vehicle’s original coating and paint.
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