Getting Aircraft Paint Right with IR
Painting a commercial plane isn’t like painting a car. When you’re cruising at 35,000 feet, the fuselage takes a beating from UV rays and wild temperature swings. To make sure the topcoat actually stays put, we use short-wave infrared (IR) radiators to cure the paint. Think of it this way: a convection oven just heats up the air. That’s slow and clunky. IR lamps go straight for the paint. They trigger the chemical bond without baking the entire aluminum airframe. The heat side of things Covering a massive fuselage takes a lot of energy. We use high-wattage quartz tubes to make sure the heat hits every inch evenly. Because planes are curved, we play around with the wattage and the focal length to keep the temperature steady across the whole surface. The best part? It’s fast. Like, really fast. The paint hits its curing temp in seconds. That’s huge because it stops solvents from getting trapped under the surface—which is usually where the paint starts to fail and peel. The gear These aren’t your average lightbulbs. We build the lamps with reinforced quartz so they don’t shatter when they heat up and cool down rapidly. Since aircraft hangars are huge, we use heavy-duty connectors for the wiring. If you use cheap cables, you’ll get voltage drops, and your heat will be inconsistent. We also set things up in zones. That way, you can give the nose cone a different heat level than the main body of the plane. The reality check Now, IR isn’t magic. It’s power-hungry. If your electrical grid isn’t ready for the massive draw of a full IR array, you’re going to trip breakers. It’s a headache you don’t want. Then there’s the “sweet spot” for distance. If the lamp is too close, you’ll scorch the paint. Too far? The paint never reaches its glass transition temperature (Tg), and the finish won’t hold up. Your crew will need to spend some time calibrating that distance based on how thick the paint is and how humid it is in the hangar that day.