Webinar: Looking Back to Drive the Future

Registration is Compliments of The Electrocoat Association!
Click here for details!

Thin Film (ZrO) Pretreatment has been on OEM vehicles around the world for nearly 12 years. Some believe it is still an "experimental" conversion coating. The key questions are:

• Is thin film pretreatment a viable technology that provides sufficient protection for high quality OEM vehicles in the most severe corrosive environments in North America?
• How does bare steel corrosion performance compare to other substrates with zirconium and zinc phosphate conversion coatings?

In this webinar, we will review several field surveys of cars and trucks that targets vehicles with this technology to evaluate how they are performing in the real world versus laboratory tests and their various predictions. Let's look back at these results to drive the future of this technology.

Kevin Cunningham is currently a Senior Technical Expert at PPG with 43 years of pretreatment and electrocoat experience. Kevin came to PPG after 41 years at General Motors, which included start-up and operational responsibilities with the second cathodic electrocoat system at GM in 1976. Since those days in the history of cationic electrocoat, he found a home testing and approving pretreatment and electrocoat materials. His responsibilities also included specifying global bill of process and general technical requirements, and facilitating chemical, technical, equipment and process related operational details for pretreatment and electrocoat applications. 

Degrees in Metallurgical Science and Manufacturing / Industrial Engineering have been instrumental in his understanding and participation in the evolution of not only cathodic electrocoat, but also the industry-wide transitioning from zinc phosphate to zirconium oxide conversion coating technologies.