A friend of mine has an old milk can (galvanized steel) that has been painted a couple of times and he would like to strip the paint off but he can be rather sensitive to harsh chemicals. Any ideas. I told him how smart you guys and gals are
soda blaster.
(depending on the type of paint, soaking it in coca~cola for a day or two and hitting it with a brillo pad might work. Coke eats through a lot of organic stuff).
The citrus based strippers are very effective, you just need to give them plenty of time to work.
My first thought was the citrus stripper too but another idea is a wire brush on an drill. It will leave swirls on the steel but they are kind of cool looking. As it is galvanized make sure he wears a respirator if he goes the steel brush route.
Heat gun.
Word of warning if you use a wire-brush on a drill: wear protective clothing. I had a wire fling off of one of those and embed itself in my knee. Four or five years ago. Still in there.
Yikes. That precludes you getting an MRI by the wayâŚ
if you have a tank big enough, iâd try to remove it electrolytically, maybe. but otherwise with enough chemical paint strippers, anything comes off eventually. i wouldnât want to try and blast or burn the whole thing personally, but either might be effective to move the traces left behind by stripping.
Yeah⌠letâs hope I donât need a third ACL replacement on that knee.
Or face a really quick extractionâŚ
Once you see a tossed aluminium plate plucked out of the air by an MRI magnet, you really begin to see the power they have.
Is the paint only on the outside? And is he trying to save the galvanizing?
Wouldnât that just pull it out for him? Free metal splinter removal?
out or through depending on his orientation to the DC fieldâŚ
Yeah, but itâd be out then Gotta be in more or less vertically from the mechanism of injury.
Iâve got one in a finger but itâs horizontal across. I think about just cutting it out with a razor blade (itâs close enough to the surface that I can see its shadow) but itâs in my left hand and thatâs my dominant one for fine motor skills (like manipulating a sharp razor blade). I figure if it comes up & through during an MRI itâs gonna hurt like bejeebus but itâll heal quick and the pain wonât be that long.
You say drill, I say grillâŚ
Unfortunately no, or I would have been able to extract it. It bent and twisted as I stood up from where I had been crouching (quite painfully). Unless it has moved a lot, it will probably be a matter of an x-ray and surgical extraction before I get another MRI.
Let me tell you, until you have held a metal object in a MRI scanner, you have no idea how powerful this is. I participated in a study (actually really cool) run by a friend, where they had me doing increasingly complex realtime puzzle solving while in a fMRI scanner (watches realtime brain activity) and to indicate my choice had a laser pointer (âMRI safeâ) taped to my hand. There was a teeny, tiny piece of ferrous metal in it (like the tiny spring under the button) and it was over 4lbs of force on my hand. Half the time they had me on my back and half on my front, and depending which it either wanted to tear away or through my hand (unless you know the direction of the DC field, you wonât know out or in until youâre inside). My arms ached for days afterwardsâŚ
I believe the answer is yes, to both.
Thank you to everyone for your suggestions, I forwarded him a link to this thread so he could read them.