is driving development of new products,” PPG’s Cancilla said.
“Regulations focused upon the reduction of volatile organic
compounds (VOCs) also drive continual development of new
approaches to address these changing requirements.”
Krebs also noted that Sherwin-Williams’ customers are show-
ing interest in low VOC coatings. “There is a huge movement
across all segments in aerospace to push chrome out of use. We
see burgeoning interest in waterborne coatings for interior coat-
ings for cabins as well as replacing primers and topcoats with
waterborne coatings.
Meeting Customers’ Expectations
Aerospace coatings customers are continuously looking to im-
prove efficiencies. “Whether they are OEMs, airlines or MROs,
our customers are primarily concerned about the products that
can be applied with predictable, reliable results quickly so that
their operations can be optimized,” said Cancilla. “They are
looking for products that help to improve the aircraft perfor-
mance, so coatings that contribute to weight reduction, solar
heat reduction, noise reduction, drag reduction, and ice release
are being developed or have been developed to support these
goals. And our customers are looking for more environmentally
friendly products that minimize their needs for material controls
and the associated costs.”
“Customers want reliability, both in the products they
buy and the service they receive,” said AkzoNobel’s Griffin.”
Meeting a specification is only the first step to satisfying needs.
Customers want a supplier/partner that can deliver products that
improve their operation and work in their environment. They
also want consistency, so they can plan their painting operations
and eliminate waste in the process.”
The focus at AkzoNobel is to develop products and services
that make its customers more successful. “This success can be
measured in multiple ways: reduced turn around or down time,
increased durability and longer life, more efficient applications,
and when things do go wrong, a robust quality and service
package to solve the issue quickly and effectively,” said Griffin.
“Reducing layer thickness and weight is always desirable, but
not at the cost of performance. To realize these savings, appli-
cation must be tightly controlled and this is extremely difficult
when much of the industry relies on manual applications. While
basecoat/clearcoat technology offers the potential to reduce lay-
er thickness and weight, the benefits are relatively small and dif-
ficult to calculate compared to the real quantifiable cost savings
of extending the repaint cycle by three to five years. An added
benefit is the commercial value to an airline’s brand by greatly
reducing color fade and loss of gloss seen with many aircraft
painted with current high solids paint systems.”
PPG Aerospace Coatings has a significant product develop-
ment portfolio to address the industry and its customers’ needs.
Its global sales and product line teams are positioned in key lo-
cations around the world to facilitate engagement with its OEM,
airline, MRO and military customers. “Our product line teams
support not only our Aerospace Coatings business but also
our Aerospace Sealants, Aerospace Transparencies, Aerospace
Packaging, and Aerospace TSS (Total Service Solutions) chemi-
cal management businesses,” Cancilla said.”They interact with
our sales teams to understand the continually evolving needs of
our customers. The product line teams then engage with our
product technology teams to provide market-facing direction to
our product development portfolios.”
PPG’s Aerospace Coatings portfolio consists of projects that
are designed to address weight reduction and aircraft operational efficiency opportunities, application efficiency improvements
over current products, increased field service life and robustness,
and lower impact to environmental issues. “These are the core
drivers of our portfolio, and all of our development projects
and technologies are focused upon addressing these objectives,”
Cancilla noted. “With many customers, we have regular portfolio reviews ensuring that we maintain alignment of our projects
to their current demands, and priorities are changed at times
based upon the evolution of their needs and values. This approach ensures that we maintain a current, active portfolio and
produce products and technologies where our customers can
achieve optimum value.”
New Products
The significant product development portfolio of the PPG
Aerospace Coatings business has resulted in the launch of many
new products that contribute to higher performance of its cus-
tomers’ aircraft. “Our new Desothane HD Basecoat Clearcoat
products have been applied on over 200 aircraft globally and
have proven to achieve very robust application characteristics
with consistently excellent appearance while minimizing ap-
plication time and overall material weight,” Cancilla said. “We
have also launched our new Aerocron electrocoating process
that is completely chrome free and water-based. Aerocron elec-
trocoat primer can improve application efficiency from 30 to
60 percent for spray-applied products to over 95 percent while
reducing the average weight of the applied coating from 30 per-
cent to 70 percent depending upon the complexity of the part to
which the coating is applied.”
“Our new Desoprime CF Chrome Free Wash Primer was
recently launched and has proven to achieve application
King Aerospace Commercial Corporation is using Sherwin-Williams aerospace
coatings to paint this plane.
