Aerospace MRO

Maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) is crucial in ensuring a safe and reliable fleet for airline operators. Aerospace MRO covers all airframe, engine, and component services related to ensuring aircraft safety and airworthiness – ABCD checks, composite repair, depaint / repaint, and engine maintenance. Using high-quality and reliable products and materials during construction and repairs increases the overall safety and longevity of your aircraft.

Henkel offers airline MRO customers solutions that meet major OEM qualifications in many ready-to-use size configurations:

• Structural adhesive repair solutions for aircraft composite and metal structures, cleaners, paint strippers, and brighteners
• Surface treatment solutions for cleaners, paint strippers, conversion coatings, engine cleaners, and aircraft parts repair and overhaul

Continue reading or contact a member of our team today to find out more about our Aerospace MRO solutions

ABCD Checks

ABCD checks are planned maintenance inspection programs that are essential in ensuring a safe and reliable fleet for airline operators.

With support from our authorized distribution network, Henkel delivers ABCD check solutions for aircraft construction materials and repair for airline fleets around the globe. Our broad portfolio of high performance BONDERITE^® solutions include:

• Metal Pre-Treatment
• Corrosion Check Chemicals/Depaint/Repaint
• Aircraft Cleaners, Deoxidizers, and Desmutters

Using metal pre-treatments is essential for the longevity of your airframe and aerospace parts. Properly cleaning all aerospace parts before bonding, sealing, or painting will lead to longer lasting and durable results. Our range of metal pre-treatment solutions creates a consistent surface that will meet all of your aviation MRO requirements. With more than seven decades of experience in aircraft corrosion control, prevention, and protection, Henkel’s BONDERITE^® solutions cover all steps of the surface treatment process: cleaners and alkaline etchants for the cleaning phase, deoxidizers and desmutting products for the activation phase, and conversion coatings for the surface treatment phase.

When performing corrosion checks and paint modifications, it is important to choose consistent and reliable aircraft paint removers and repaint systems with industry-leading OEM qualifications. Henkel’s BONDERITE^® depaint and repaint technologies offer a complete portfolio of airline MRO solutions with solvent, hydrogen peroxide, and water-based products that are NESHAP compliant and are easy to apply as they cling to vertical surfaces. Furthermore, they eliminate the surface contamination of mechanical removal methods on your aircraft.

Before applying bonding adhesives or paint, the area needs to be properly prepared to remove oxide layers and smut. Henkel’s range of BONDERITE^® deoxidizers easily and efficiently remove corrosive products and heavy build-up of oxides or residues acting as both an anti-corrosion treatment and cleaner for your aircraft. At the same time, its desmutting products completely remove surface deposits. With our years of experience, you can depend on Henkel to provide aerospace MRO solutions for all your aircraft corrosion prevention and surface treatment needs.

Composite Repair

As OEMs design and build more lightweight aircrafts with composite parts and structures, the need for more user-friendly and proven bonded repair solutions becomes critical for airline operators and MRO shops. Aircraft materials used in the construction and repairs of complex composite structures can be challenging for the aerospace industry, with the various types of damage requiring different repair approaches and demanding innovative solutions.

Under the LOCTITE^® brand, Henkel offers ready-to-use adhesive solutions for a variety of composite repair requirements:

• Bonding, potting, and filling
• Laminating and wet lay-up
• Out-of-autoclave processing
• Specialty repair – high temperature, surfacing film, and lightning strike

When it comes to aircraft components, structural integrity is essential. This is why Henkel offers aerospace manufacturers composite bonding, potting, and filling products that bond or join composite sub-components with excellent chemical and environmental resistance, variable viscosity, and extraordinary mechanical performance, without requiring additional fasteners. Our range of LOCTITE^® products offer lower adherent thickness, letting you take advantage of the stiffness properties of composites and provides a separation of dissimilar materials.

A low viscosity system is needed for high temperature wet lay-up composite construction or repairs. With more than 50 years experience, Henkel’s catalogue of LOCTITE^® laminate and wet lay-up resin solutions allow wet lamination as well as out-of-autoclave curing processes to be employed. Since they cure very fast under heat, they provide an optimal adhering surface for subsequent painting and coating.

For specialty aircraft construction repairs, Henkel offers materials such as surfacing films that provide a barrier for dissimilar materials, decrease surface preparation time, and provide protection of structural fibers. Laminated films composed of a surfacing film and a conductive metal foil protect the composite structure from damage caused by lightning strikes. With our LOCTITE^® portfolio, you can be sure to get the technically most advanced aerospace surface finishing solutions.

Contact a member of our team today to find out more about our Aerospace MRO solutions

Metal and Honeycomb Bonding Repair

When it comes to bonding or repair of metal parts and structures of an aircraft, you want a solution that has high strength, chemical resistance, and resists creep under sustained loads. In addition, you need a two-component system with a room temperature cure. Too many requirements? Not for us.

Our broad assortment of metal and honeycomb bonding repair solutions offers high performance adhesion in ready-to-use configurations for aerospace MRO and OEM customers. Henkel’s LOCTITE^® products for aircraft parts repair and overhaul offer improved productivity and safety for employees as well as reduced down time and minimal waste while providing superior mechanical strength and performance.

Depaint and Repaint

Depaint /repaint is a process which aircraft go through many times during their service life and requires safe, reliable, and responsible solutions. Henkel was the first to offer a chlorine-free solvent aircraft paint stripper to the market – offering optimal performance in paint removers for both metal and plastic parts while being environmentally friendly.

Our BONDERITE^® depaint and repaint technologies are NESHAP compliant, thixotropic products — solvent, hydrogen peroxide and water-based – that makes paint stripping and applying aircraft corrosion protection of metal and composite materials simple. Our aircraft paint removers are available in aerosol packaging, use less material, generate less waste, and overall save you time and money. Environmentally sustainable aircraft paint supplies and formulations, as well as paint strippers for aluminum and composite are also available. Rely on Henkel Depaint & Repaint solutions – formerly known as ALODINE and TURCO – to get back in the air faster.

Under the BONDERITE^® brand, Henkel offers a broad portfolio of high-performance water based, acidic, alkaline, and peroxide based aircraft paint removers and products:

• Cleaners
• Deoxidizers
• Brighteners
• Conversion coatings

Cleaners

A clean surface is essential for all aircraft applications, and aerospace cleaners improve the corrosion performance and optimizes contact bonding and sealing of parts. Our portfolio of BONDERITE^® aqueous and solvent-based aircraft cleaning products removes dirt, grime, or impurities from a surface and delivers optimal performance. Together with our world-class technical expertise and training modules we offer cleaning and corrosion control solutions for all your aircraft requirements.

Engine Maintenance

Aircraft engines need to be effectively maintained and regularly overhauled for safe operation. The appropriate engine maintenance protocol is dependent on many factors such as regional regulations and engine OEMs / shop requirements. For this reason, professionally and thoroughly cleaning aerospace engine parts for effective non-destructive testing (NDT) inspection and any corresponding engine overhaul or parts replacement activities is vital to ensure the engine is in optimal working condition.

Under the BONDERITE^® brand, Henkel offers a range of aircraft cleaning products solutions such as surface treatment and off-wing engine overhaul and on-wing compressor wash that address OEM specifications for aircraft engine maintenance:

• Metal Pre-treatment
• Cleaners
• Compressor Washer

Engine Cleaners

Improve aircraft operating efficiency with Henkel’s engine overhaul chemical cleaner solutions. Formerly known as ALODINE and TURCO and qualified to industry-leading OEM specifications, Henkel’s time-tested, industry proven BONDERITE^® engine overhaul and compressor wash chemicals add efficiency to your jet engine maintenance practices.

In the interest of safety, many external considerations from regional regulatory agencies to engine OEMs/ shop requirements contribute to and determine the appropriate engine maintenance protocol. Aircraft Engine parts need to be professionally and thoroughly cleaned for effective Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) inspection and corresponding engine overhaul and parts repair or replacement activities.

Providing the broadest portfolio in the industry, BONDERITE^® engine overhaul and compressor washers meet major OEM process specifications while being available globally. Whether you require an on-wing or off-wing solution, BONDERITE^® aircraft engine cleaner removes metal oxide scales, sulfadations, and carbonaceous material while providing highly cost effective, consistent, and reliable results.

Chemical Milling and Maskants

Since surface preparation is fundamental for paint adhesion, surface bonding and corrosion protection, BONDERITE^® chemical milling solutions prepare metal surfaces by cleaning and etching them to produce a high-quality, fine satin surface. Our chemical milling solutions offer controlled etch rates that allow for very sharp and defined surfaces, while our chemical maskants protect non-etched areas.

Our chemical milling and maskants solutions simplify masking. First, they can be applied in many ways: by dip, spray, flow-coat, or brush. Second, they save working hours as air-dry is sufficient for many of these applications. And third, they are easy to remove by hand-peeling. Three-fold benefits for aircraft subtractive manufacturing and maintenance.

Further Resources

To learn more about our Aerospace MRO solutions, download the following PDFs.