The authoritative public forum
  for Metal Finishing since 1989
-----

Safe to weld or cut CARC coated materials?

I am a new shop employee. Is it ok to weld or cut CARC coated materials?

Keith Grinage
Shop employee - Texarkana, Texas, USA
July 8, 2010

---

July 14, 2010

Keith,

I cannot comment specifically about the product you are using, but some general advice:

Welding through organic coatings is not a good idea for all sorts of reasons, both practical and for health and safety reasons. If you need to weld then the coating should be stripped before the welding operation is carried out.

Cutting provides its own set of hazards, from compromising the coating and reducing its CARC properties to generating potentially hazardous dust. I do not know how you are cutting the material, but I would suggest that as a minimum you should have local extract ventilation when cutting to remove as much dust as possible. Cutting wet would also help, plus it would help prevent overheating and potentially hazardous decomposition products from the CARC coating burning at the point of cutting. You may even want to consider some form of mask. Conventional paper dust masks may be sufficient, but if a lot of dust is generated you may want to consider using a fitted mask with filtration.

Brian Terry
Aerospace - Yeovil, Somerset, UK