Archive for the ‘R&D Corner’ Category

Soda Blasting Made Easy!

Regardless of your project, removing paint and rust are time consuming. There are countless ways to achieve the end result, but one of the best ways to do it right, is by Abrasive Blasting. Abrasive blasting is a process in which Abrasive blasting media is shot at the piece and strips the coating or rust (Eastwood carries different types of media depending on your application). This allows for quick stripping, and even cleaning in hard to reach areas that conventional methods do not work.

For stripping paint and coatings, one of the safest methods is Soda Blasting. This process uses bicarbonate of soda media (baking soda, although different from what is in your kitchen) to effectively remove paint, but without causing damage to the surface metal. In fact, it is so gentle that you can leave the windows and trim in place and it will not etch those surfaces. Soda also works great for degreasing parts, fire demage restoration, graffiti removal, and mold remediation. 

If you are working on a Corvette, this is the ticket for stripping paint from the fiberglass……wish I had a soda blaster when I did my Corvette and my father’s Corvette….I spent countless hours removing the original paint.

As soda blasting is very gentle on the surface, it will not remove rust or corrosion from the surface.  Eastwood’s Soda Blaster can be converted to a conventional pressure blaster to run more aggressive media for rust removal. This essentially gives you two machines in one – a pressure blaster and a soda blaster. If you already own a pressure blaster and would like to soda blast, Eastwood offers our Soda Blasting Retrofit kit that allows you to convert your pressure blaster to a soda blaster. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us on the Eastwood Forum.

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Learning how to Tig Weld, The Eastwood Way!

Here at Eastwood, a lot goes into launching a new product. I often times cover the “exciting” parts of the process where we are testing the product, or when we get the product perfected. Another piece to the puzzle when launching a new Eastwood product, is the training to use the product. We believe hands-on learning with our products is best. This better helps everyone in the company relate to customers, and better help answer questions.

As some of you may have noticed, I have hinted at a new welder due to hit our welding product line in the near future. We have been working on an Eastwood TIG welder to compliment our already successful MIG welders. Unfortunately due to the cost, and difficulty of TIG welding, some of our employees have little or no experience when it comes to TIG. This is why we borrowed the time of a certified welding instructor to give a small group of us a crash course in TIG welding. Now I have to admit, none of us came out of the class a master welder…( I’d like to brag that my first 2 beads were the best of the group that had never TIG welded before!). But, we did come out with a better understanding of how a TIG welder works, what some of the common errors beginners make are, as well as what to look for in a good weld. Throughout the day I spent some time snapping off photos of our class. We had a few people from almost every department of Eastwood, from marketing, to retail, customer service, warehouse, to directors.. we all got some time under the helmet!

Check out some of the pictures I snapped off during the day, as well as the plates of aluminum we welded (or tried to at least). Keep your eyes open for some more sneak peaks of our new TIG!

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Eastwood Welders- Good for more than bodywork!

Today we began a DIY video that will show an example of some heavy duty welding that our Mig 175 Welder can handle. In this video we will be highlighting how to build a Mustang II cross member kit from Welder Series out of Ontario, Canada. These guys make a plethora of parts and kits for modifying and updating your muscle car or hot rod project. Below are some teaser shots of what we were up to today! Enjoy!

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Save the animals! Test on Junk.

We at Eastwood prefer to test our products on what they were meant to be used on. Recently we sent our new Evan, our new R&D guy to a couple local junkyards to rummage for some bits to test out some new “Top Secret” products we are working on. I snapped off a few pictures after he got back.

Can anyone rattle off what vehicles these parts came off of? The first 3 to guess 3 or more right get a free digital tire pressure gauge!!

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Give your achy hands a rest!

Most any car enthusiast has experienced the feeling of having tired, achy hands from sanding and polishing. Elbow grease is a inevitable, necessary evil of working on anything. I  am a huge fan of the look of polished aluminum wheels, nothing beats the shine of a mirror polished wheel. Unfortunately the time and effort taken to get a wheel to that stage is quite extensive. What makes it worse, is the first time it rains, or you take the car on a drive.. a little bit of that shine is lost.  I dread the task of repolishing my alloys before a show or cruise. Here at Eastwood we came up with a product that is meant to greatly reduce the need to resand or repolish a bare metal part.

This new product is our “Metal Protect”. With this product you simply spray a thin film on the part (for me it is the polished lips of my wheels), and let it dry. Once dried, it now becomes a protective barrier from most anything mother nature can throw at it. When designing and testing this product, our R&D team took a couple different parts and sprayed them with the Metal Protect. They then left the parts sit outside for MONTHS (about 3.5-4 months) uncovered, and naked to the weather conditions thrown at us over late winter/early spring (including record breaking snow accumulation we received this winter). We found  that the amount of corrosion and flash rust that occurred on these parts was stopped dead in its tracks! The brake rotors below both were removed from a car at the same time. Check out the amount of rust built up on the non-treated rotor!

Next we took a test panel (brass) and taped off one section while spraying the other half with Metal Protect. Even now, months later there is a definite line as to where we had taped off the untreated section.

This brings some great ideas to mind for the alternative ways this product could be used. One I thought of, is whenever I am doing body work or metal repair on a vehicle, I always have to fight flash rust. Normally your options are slim when dealing with flash rust. You have the option of simply spending the time sanding the panel before beginning work on it again (to remove the flash rust), or  to prime the area.. only to then sand it off later when you want to begin working on it again. This is where the achy hands come into play, not only is it tiring enough that you have to sand body filler, welds, old paint, etc. But to have to go around and do that process each time you want to work on the project.. well, that just gets quite annoying (and painful too!). What I suggest you do, is to spray the bare metal generously with Metal Protect. This will stop flash rust and corrosion (Even if the part is sitting outside for a short period of time). Then once you want to work on the product again, or before you top coat the part, simply wipe the treated area with PRE Cleaner. The PRE takes the Metal Protect off quite easily, and allows you to get right back to work.

Currently, we are also testing this product on rubber window seals, as well as plastic headlight lenses. How great would it be to preserve those rubber seals or keep those plastic lights from hazing? Currently we have tested,  and found that the Metal Protect is “Rubber safe”. This means your rubber wouldn’t turn white or discolor as some other protectants tend to do. The jury is still out on how long the formula will hold up when on the windshield seal or any other seal that sees tons of extreme conditions, but we know it will give a good barrier that is much better than leaving them untreated!

We’d love to hear you experiences and interesting uses for this product! Drop us a line, or add a review to the product once you have tried it out!

-Regards,

Matt M.

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