Why Most Coating Failures Start Upstream: What Pretreatment Lines Should Really Be Monitoring

Pretreatment is the foundation of coating performance. When it's right, adhesion and corrosion resistance are consistent and predictable. When it's off — even slightly — problems often surface months later as rust, blistering or rework.

In this webinar, Hubbard-Hall pretreatment expert Gary Raihl draws on decades of plant-floor and lab experience to focus on the three variables that most directly control results: time, temperature and testing. Rather than stopping at routine titrations, this session examines how cleaner exposure, stage temperature, line speed and bath control influence soil removal, water break and conversion coating formation.

Attendees will see how these fundamentals translate into coating weight, adhesion and corrosion performance — and why good chemistry can still fall short when process drift or poor communication between operations, equipment and chemical teams goes unchecked. The goal is to clarify what should be monitored, why it matters and how small deviations in pretreatment conditions can become major coating problems downstream.

Agenda:

• Why coating failures start in pretreatment: how incomplete cleaning or poor conversion lead to corrosion, adhesion loss and rework months later
• The impact of time and temperature on performance: how dwell time, bath temperature and line speed control soil removal and coating formation
• What to monitor beyond titrations: key indicators such as dwell time, temperature, water break, coating weight and in-process verification
• How testing connects the lab to the line: using salt spray, coating weight and process logs to confirm performance and detect drift early
• Why communication is a process control tool: how coordination between chemical, equipment and operations teams prevents compatibility issues and downstream failures