How to Remove Cladding
Industrial cladding refers to the engineered protective coating system applied to metal panels and structural components. These coatings, including high-performance formulations like plastisol (PVC), polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), polyester, and polyurethane, serve a critical function. They provide long-term corrosion resistance, weatherproofing, and structural durability for assets ranging from manufacturing facilities to chemical plants and transportation infrastructure.
When the coating’s service life comes to an end or the substrate requires inspection and maintenance, a significant operational challenge arises: how to remove cladding completely and efficiently. The primary technical hurdle is achieving total coating delamination without compromising the integrity of the underlying metal substrate.
Inefficient or incorrect cladding removal can lead to surface damage, increased downtime, and elevated project costs. To help ensure precision, speed, and optimal surface preparation for recoating, it’s essential to choose the method that performs best.
Why Is Cladding Removal Necessary?
The most common reason for removing cladding is the scheduled end of a coating system’s service life. Coatings degrade over time due to UV or chemical exposure and thermal cycling, necessitating removal and replacement to restore corrosion protection.
Physical damage from impact, extreme weather events, or wear also creates localized failure points that often require full-panel or system-wide stripping. Process changes within a facility, such as new temperature ranges or exposure to different chemicals, may demand a coating with different specifications.
In all cases, the process must yield a contaminant-free, properly profiled substrate that meets surface preparation standards to maintain the adhesion and longevity of the new coating system.
Methods for Cladding Coating Removal
The specific removal method you choose affects your project timeline, cost, and final surface quality. That’s why many industry leaders are turning to advanced techniques that offer superior control and efficiency.
Manual and Mechanical Removal
Traditional approaches involve scraping, grinding, and needle scaling. While sometimes useful for small, localized repairs, these methods are labor-intensive and time-consuming for large-scale projects. More critically, they present a high risk of inconsistent substrate damage, creating gouges, heat-affected zones, and an uneven surface profile unsuitable for recoating.
Chemical Stripping
Chemical strippers employ reactive agents to dissolve or blister the coating binder. This method can be effective for certain polymers but introduces significant operational complexities. The use of hazardous chemicals requires stringent personal protective equipment (PPE), specialized containment, and costly hazardous waste disposal protocols. Chemical processes also risk incomplete removal, leaving behind residual contaminants that impair new coating adhesion and may pose environmental compliance challenges.
Abrasive Blasting for Cladding Removal
Abrasive blasting is the preferred, high-efficiency standard for industrial cladding removal. The process involves propelling specialized abrasive media at high pressure to simultaneously strip the coating and profile the metal substrate. This technique provides unmatched speed and efficiency across large surface areas, demonstrates versatility across all common cladding coating types, and, when executed correctly, produces a consistently clean, profiled surface ready for new coatings. The effectiveness of abrasive blasting, however, depends on a critical variable: the type of abrasive media used.
Choosing Your Abrasive for Cladding Removal
The abrasive media determines stripping rate, surface finish, and operational safety. Traditional abrasives like silica sand, coal, nickel, and copper slags have inherent drawbacks. They fracture rapidly upon impact, reducing cutting efficiency and generating high volumes of dust. Many abrasive media types can also embed in substrates, creating contamination points that may cause new coatings to fail prematurely.
Superoxalloy abrasives are the next-generation blasting media. They’re specifically formulated to overcome the limitations of conventional materials. Superoxalloy abrasives resist premature fracturing, maintaining their kinetic energy to deliver maximum cutting power to the surface. This results in faster stripping rates for thick, elastomeric, and high-solids coatings and claddings.
The Solution: DynamiX for Tough Cladding Coatings
10X Engineered Materials’ DynamiX is a specifically engineered superoxalloy abrasive made for demanding stripping and surface preparation tasks. It’s formulated to excel against the thick, durable polymers found in modern industrial cladding, including high-build epoxies, polyurethanes, and elastomeric coatings.
DynamiX offers:
- Faster results: Faster stripping rates significantly reduce total project time and labor costs.
- Improved safety: DynamiX is biosoluble, non-hazardous, and generates low amounts of dust. This improves operator visibility and protects workers during cladding removal projects.
- Superior surface finish: It leaves a clean, consistent profile that maximizes surface area and mechanical adhesion for the new coating system, providing long-term performance and asset protection.
Your Solution for Industrial Coating Removal
The removal of industrial cladding is a precision operation in which method and material selection directly impact project viability, cost, and the performance of the refurbished asset. Using a superoxalloy abrasive like DynamiX helps speed up operations, delivers excellent surface preparation quality, and enables flawless, durable cladding removal.
Switch to 10X Engineered Materials DynamiX for your next cladding removal project. Contact our team to discuss your specifications and get started.