Surface Treatments Solutions

Henkel offers a full range of Surface treatment products, processes and equipment to enable our customers to produce high-quality and durable metal parts using highly efficient metal pretreatment processes. The effective surface treatment of metal continuously requires new, innovative products as the markets are moving towards a different substrate mix based on a higher amount of light metals, continuously evolving customer demands, increasingly challenging quality standards as well as stricter legal requirements for more sustainable products.

Henkel has made it a priority to develop innovative surface treatment products and processes that help reduce process costs by facilitating lower operating temperatures, shorter treatment times, or by even reducing the total number of process steps, in order to offer our customers a competitive advantage to meet their economic targets in challenging markets. Henkel is at the forefront of providing high-quality process solutions for different surface treatment applications. Application examples include manufacturing of automobiles, home appliances, HVAC systems, aerospace, metal packaging, agricultural, and many other industries.

Benefits of Henkel’s surface treatments and functional coatings:

• Best-in-class corrosion protection and paint adhesion with stable processes
  
• Tailor-made solutions for light and mixed-metal substrates
• Reduced energy and water consumption
• Fewer process steps
• Reduced sludge and other environmental hazards
• Increased sustainability

Henkel’s surface treatment solutions and surface coating technologies include a comprehensive range of products covering the complete pretreatment process as well as adjacent processes such as paint coagulation and paint stripping. Henkel offers alkaline and acidic cleaners and degreasers, acidic and neutral deoxidizers and etchants, conditioners, various Iron-, Manganese- or Zinc-Phosphating solutions, as well as post treatments, passivation, and corrosion inhibitors for surface treatment of materials for adhesive bonding or painting operations.

Contact us and find out how Henkel’s can provide personalized surface treatments solutions.

BONDERITE^® Next-Generation Metal Pretreatment Technology

Our BONDERITE^® next-generation metal pretreatment technologies allows the increased use of light metals while maintaining excellent corrosion protection, as well as reducing/eliminating the heavy metals and sludge generation in the metal pretreatment process.

With Henkel, companies benefit from our leading-edge technologies, innovative power, global presence, and state-of-the-art services and enjoy the performance, process reliability, efficiency and sustainability that come with Henkel's BONDERITE^® next-generation metal pretreatment solutions.

Mixed materials play a key role in weight reduction. At Henkel, we are ready to help you increase the use of alternative substrates with weight-saving properties for every part of a vehicle – from the powertrain and chassis to the body-in-white.

The use of aluminum is increasing, especially for automotive manufacturing, as OEM and automotive manufacturers continue to mix metals and reduce the weight of vehicles while maintaining strong car bodies and frames. For the pretreatment process of these lightweight and mixed metal substrates, Henkel has developed an innovative 2-Step-Process that incorporates a zinc-phosphating in the first step, ensuring less etching on aluminum and lower amounts of fluoride use, and the second step of passivation involves cutting-edge nanoceramic technology necessary for the effective aluminum pretreatment.   

Nanoceramic Technology and thin film coatings

The BONDERITE^® M-NT coating range offers new nanoceramic pre-treatment solutions as a more sustainable substitute for zinc and iron metal phosphating. The thin-film conversion coating provides superior paint adhesion and corrosion protection while reducing environmental impact.

This cohesive, inorganic, high-density coating is significantly thinner (<100 nm) than a traditional zinc phosphate coating and has been developed for all metal surfaces, e.g. steel, zinc, and aluminum. The BONDERITE^® M-NT nanoceramic technology contains no heavy metals, reduces the complexity of the process, and leads to superior corrosion resistance with minimal environmental impact. Additionally, Henkel is supporting our customers to process a high amount of aluminum in the metal mix. Overall, the BONDERITE^® M-NT system enables light weighting constructions while saving processing time, lowering costs, reducing energy requirements, and cutting down on waste.   

Henkel provides a full line of surface treatment products no matter the treatment process application, with a number of key benefits for manufacturers:

• Reduced energy and water use
• Reduced product consumption
• Reduced chemical waste
• Fewer process steps
• Reduced cycle time
• Environmental benefits

Contact us today to arrange for an expert consultation.

The finishing of light metals like Aluminum and Magnesium keeps playing a more and more increasing role in the metal pretreatment industry. Henkel offers highly innovative processes and products for the very dynamic market of high-quality aluminum pretreatment.

Our range of products includes products for alkaline degreasing, aluminum deoxidizers as well as best-in-class aluminum conversion products for the passivation of the metal.

Our products are used in many different industries from the Aluminum-wheels-production and other light weight automotive components, over applications in the general industry to metal pretreatment solutions for architectural materials. 

Anodization of Aluminum

Aluminum anodizing is a controlled oxidation process that includes 5 distinct stages: cleaning to remove grease and other contaminants, pre-treatment, which comprises etching and brightening, anodizing, in which the anodic film is built and combined with the metal by passing an electrical current through an acid electrolyte bath, coloring, which can be done in a variety of ways, and finally sealing, which closes the pores in the anodic film. Coating thickness and surface characteristics are tightly controlled to meet end-product specifications.

We offer a comprehensive range of products for all steps of the anodizing process:

• Cleaning – e.g. borate-free and low/no foam behavior
• Etching – low foam and less viscosity at high Al concentration
• Bright etching – ready-to-use solution
• De-smutting – NOx reduction and no etching on surface
• Electrolytic coloration – high uniformity and high throwing power
• Sealing – Ni-free hot seal (< 95°C)

Etch Passivation of Aluminum

A unique process for Aluminum pretreatment is the Etch-Passivation-Process or 2040-process. Typically, any of the Aluminum pretreatment processes involve deoxidizers and etchants for metals help to remove oxides and contaminations from the metal surface - a process called surface etching. This is an essential part of the aluminum surface preparation for painting. Subsequently, a passivation coating is applied on the surface.

In order to reduce the floorspace required for an Aluminum passivation line, Henkel has developed the so called etch-passivation-process or 2040-process combining the deoxidizer and passivation stage into one. This significantly reduces the number of rinse stages and, thus, floorspace required as well as chemical consumption.

The 2040-process starts with an alkaline degreaser to remove dirt, grease, and oil from the surface. In the etch-passivation stage the surface is slightly etched and simultaneously a thin Titanium-conversion coating is applied on the Aluminum offering excellent corrosion resistance and paint adhesion.

2040-coating can be used to stabilize the surface resistance of the parts, as the Ti-conversion layer prevents the re-oxidation and re-passivation of the Aluminum surface for several weeks up to months. Due to this surface stabilization it is possible to process parts like structural castings or battery boxes in welding and adhesive bonding processes long after they have been treated. This process is approved and specified for the use on such components by the major OEMs, e.g. VW TL 82428, DBL 4952.11 and many more.

BONDERITE^® M-PP-Process

The BONDERITE^® M-PP process uses a chemical ‘autodepositing’ method to build a paint coating on a steel surface. BONDERITE^® M-PP differs from electrodeposition and electrostatic application methods, because electrical current is not needed to attract pigment and resin to the components being treated. This allows the application equipment and process control to be easier and less expensive.

A unique feature of the process is that the coating is deposited only on metal surfaces leaving plastics and rubbers uncoated. The process is also able to uniformly coat both the inside and outside of complex assemblies, even those with tubular structures and narrow crevices. BONDERITE^® M-PP provides best corrosion protection especially in vulnerable areas such as where there are cavities or on sharp metal edges.

Temporary Corrosion Protection

Henkel supplies a wide range of BONDERITE^® temporary corrosion protection products to protect our customer’s parts against corrosive elements in the environment causing flash rust and surface corrosion during transport. Our product range covers water soluble corrosion inhibitors, as well as special volatile corrosion inhibitors. These surface applied corrosion inhibitors are an effective protection against corrosion and ensure parts can be delivered in perfect conditions.

Paint Strippers

Paint strippers are used to minimize our customer’s scrap costs by removing the paint from defected components, clean the part, and to reprocess and paint it. Using Henkel’s paint stripping technology, enables you to reduce your scrap costs and improve your process costs by innovative and reliable products.

Equipment & Services

An innovative smart manufacturing execution system for remote monitoring and predictive maintenance BONDERITE^® LineguardX is a cloud-based remote monitoring system that can help improve your Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) capabilities and overall production efficiency. It does so by serving as a manufacturing analytics platform that can be applied to quality management optimizing line efficiency and giving you the ability to remotely evaluate and maintain your facilities. LineguardX is an integrated IIoT monitoring system which allows for constant monitoring of different processes allowing you more control of plant maintenance operations.

Learn more about our BONDERITE^® LineguardX

Learn more on how to upgrade your pre-treatment process: