Removing a Hard Wax Layer from Stainless Sheetmetal

I remember my mother using a product called Varsol to remove wax from the hardwood floors, way back when i was a wee one.

Hello,

Thank you for your reply. I will try tracking Varsol down, here in California.

Regards.

How is this a problem??

Once you have struck your welding arc, the heat from the arc should clear the material from in front of your weld as you progress.

How does the next process remove the wax? (Ask your customer)

Ask the supplier what they recommend to remove the wax, or if they have an alternative surface protective seal that would be suitable. (We use a removable adhesive film for brushed stainless and peel it immediately before pressing and shaping hte pieces.)

Hello,

It is nice to hear from downunder. The wax is a problem in that welding will only melt and move the wax around the inside of a finished weldment (hopper) with an entry opening on one side of 1"x8" and an exit at 10"deep to a 1.5" dia tube. Virgin plastic pellets pass thru this to fill barrels for injection molding machines. The wax will contaminate the plastic until there is none left!

The magnetic stainless was a find at a local steel yard. They have a few pallets of this mtl. It is nice to work with, all corners radiused and ideal for my application at $12ea. Not all are waxed. I erred in cutting and bending a waxed piece first. I thought it was a peelable liner paper- but noo!

Regards.

First of all Varsol is a trade name for white spirit (AKA - mineral spirit, turpentine substitute, VM&P naphtha) thinner for domestic oil paints in USA.

Wax will dissolve in aliphatics (gasoline/white spirit/kerosene) at high temps it is also soluble, maybe more so, in aromatics (Toluene, Xylene, mesitylene)

The higher the boiling point the better as it will not evaporate so quickly to leave a deposit - I would go for kerosene first. You will need to heat the metal until the wax melts - you will probably need to warm the kerosene also (Care - flammable) as on cooling the wax will come out of solution. To ensure a clean surface finish with a water wash using a wetting aid such as Teepol or use a water compatible hard surface cleaner (e.g. engine cleaner - brush on wash off with water type).- again heated.

You could try the engine cleaner alone first but everything will need to be heated to melt the wax.

Hello,

Thank you for the Good Answer. This seems very do-able. I tried gasolene yersterday and it had no impact. I will try mineral spirits and kerosene with heat. My wife is going to love me cooking the wax in our oven! (joking).

Boil in oil....

Wash off the oil with detergents when cold.

Hello,

Do you have an oil suggestion.

Best Regards

Normal 20-40W engine oil, the old fashioned and cheap stuff.....not too hot as it could catch light!! No more than 100-130°C.

Getting rid of oil will be same as getting rid of wax!

Not really, there are plenty of things that will clean oil away, Quik 'N Brite is one, washing up liquid cuts through grease (and oil!, thats its job!!), Petrol is another or Meths......its an endless list.....its also really very, very easy!

In fact, simple kitchen paper towels will get 99.9% off alone and can be easily burnt to dispose of them!!!

Then washing up liquid is the easiest for the 0.1% that gets left!

How do you get rid of minor motor oil spills under the bonnet when filling? or do you just ignore them?

I have found that my exhaust leaks usually burn them off. Did you think I would just let them lay there?

LOL!!

Do you have the ability to blast it with a steam line?

It might be worth trying to get the plates cold, like put them in a freezer. After they are cold, hit the non-wax side with a hammer and you might fracture the bond between the wax and the steel.

Are you serious????

Since this is for inside feed throat for injection moulding machine and will be handling dry, but not "plastic" plastic, then why not sand blast the face of the sheet that will become the inside surface?

No hot and dangerous solvents and it is a process that can be implemented with very basic equipment (or subcontracted) that you probably already have on hand.

You could probably even do it after fabrication while preparing the outside surface for painting.

I'm just trying to imagine how I would approach our Occ Health and Safety group proposing to heat white spirit and plunge even hotter metal into that.

By the way, what make/model and size machines are these?

Hello,

This topic has taken on a life of it's own. The feed throat will be attached to the end of the sluice gate on a barrel fill pipe on a Plastic Pellet storage Silo that is ~ 13' diameter and 40' high. There is a vacuum feed system below it connected directly to 45 molding presses. The barrel filler is used for mixing special lots with colorant. It's a simple sluice gate 1/4" thick with a hole ~ 6" dia in it, pull the gate up and the 6" opening allows through flow. Shut the gate and the excess material from the hole in the gate spews onto the floor. they open and close the gate 4-5 times for every barrell fill and the fill a barrel every 5 minutes 24hrs a day. Thats a lot of waste and they have 7 silos. There is a better way if the silos were empty but it almost never happens.

My attachment feeds the excess through the 'infamous waxed throat' via a tube, back into the Silo. The shinier and cleaner the internal surface the less likely I will have a jam in the system, defeating my cost saving contraption. I will just make it out of different stainless and do everybody a favor.

Thanks to all who cared enough to reply. Being an automotive molder in California is tough at the best of times. We are now on a 3 day week. As engineers we are tasked with designing job reducing machinery and fixturing that eliminate waste, and unfortunately 'head count reduction' is the buzz word driving all our projects. Oh! I digress

2Tinker,

After hearing all the things you've tried, I am wary that maybe this is the same stuff I got last summer as a thick - and unremovable - layer of 'wax' on silver. It also got on my steel tools and could not be removed from them either.

.. do you think that the suppliers would tell me what kind of wax it was, or how they recommended removing it? Uh-unh.

Things that didn't work include: acetone, turpentine, ultrasonic cleaning with special soaps, brake degreaser (spray on petroleum product), 'natural' degreaser products (citrus oil and mineral oil based), and tarnex (acid). Melt and wipe didn't do it either, just as you said, "some" is removed never all.

In the end, some of that product was salvaged by abrasive methods: tripoli and rouge buffing.. repeatedly. Instead of easily removing, every process that moved it at all, just seemed to move it around. Clingy!!! Never seen anything like it. As for the steel tools, they had to be ground off and repolished with wet/dry 2000 grit flushed with water.

To be honest, the hours I spent trying to remedy this problem were a costly waste of time, far exceeding the value of the material. In the end most of it was written off anyway as unusable.

If you do find a way to remove the wax, or if you find out what it is??? please let us know. Good luck...

Guys, if it's not a wax, but a soft plastic like those used for circuit board conformal coating, then the solution is to use an alkaline bath.

Maybe worth trying one sheet in some caustic soda/washing soda solution. Won't hurt the stainless and does work with acrylic type coatings.

tried boiling water? Works well at getting the more stubborn caked wax off my surfboard.

dave

I imagine you want to retain as good a surface finish as possible to enable the plastic pellets to flow better inside the machine.

If the coating is wax, hot alkaline water or acetone or white spirits should remove it.

If it is a soft protective plastic of some sort, most solvents will leave a residual.

Water blast (cold) will only remove most of it.

Hot water blast should soften the coating and enable complete removal.

If it doesn't work, blast with an abrasive. Rice hulls work fairly well and won't damage the surface. For wet blasting, most authorities also allow you to use sand. A fine sand will be slower, but will leave a better surface.

You can do an initial blast with normal sand and a finish blast with fine sand to restore your surface, but the final result is heavily dependent on the skill of the operator.

Presumably you only have a limited number of sheets to do, so the slower fine sand blast may be your best bet.

Good luck

I believe you have the answer. Hot water pressure cleaner. Look what water flow did to the Grand Canyon.

We can go arounbfg a problem

I give up

Bye

FREEZE IT THEN BANG IT HARD WITH A HAMMER

See answer # 8. If you get a GA, please share it with me. LOL

Sorry did not read many. I keep bees and know a little about wax.