The Legend
of the brand Alumigrip™
Recently an article was written announcing the birthday of
the brand Alumigrip® which stated that Alumigrip was officially born on March 14,1968
making the brand 45 years old today. For those not familiar with the Alumigrip brand
name Alumigrip has been the standard of the aviation industry for high
performance polyurethane topcoat color for painting of aircraft for a long time.
The name Alumigrip is synonymous with paint for airplanes and is almost a
generic term for aircraft paint much like Kleenex is generic for facial tissue.
That article appeared in the AkzoNobel magazine publication,
REFLECTIONS Issue 13, page 6. For your interest the
REFLECTION magazine is linked here.
AKZO is the current owner of the Alumigrip brand by reason of their
purchase of the aerospace and marine businesses of U.S. Paint in 2002. The
article in Reflections magazine shows some graphics common during the period when
Alumigrip was born. The article quickly
transitions into talking about the current technology of the Alumigrip product
line which now includes a high-solids version and a base coat/ clear coat product
line for general aviation aircraft painting. But there is a lot more to the
Alumigrip story that was not told in the Reflections article. Here is an
account of the word-of-mouth history of the Alumigrip brand written by two salesmen who were actually there to experience some of the Alumigrip history.
The legend of Alumigrip as it was handed down over the years
comes from U.S. Paint where the product initially was developed. The following article is “legendary” in that
some of the actual facts about the events discussed are no longer traceable. So
this article is based on the conversations that have transpired and the
recollections over the years and may or may not be completely factual. But this story is certainly part of the
legend.
Alumigrip is believed to be the first two-component
polyurethane commercially developed for use on commercial and general aviation
aircraft in North America.
Polyurethane polymers as a chemical class were around since about
1937 having been developed by Otto Bayer and his coworkers at the laboratories
of I.G. Farben in Leverkusen, Germany, according to Wikipedia. Initially, work focused on the production of
fibers and flexible foams. With
development constrained by World War II (when PUs were applied on a limited
scale as aircraft coating), it was not until 1952 that polyisocyanates became
commercially available. Commercially
available polyurethanes for aircraft came much later.
Mr. Joe Dilschneider the President and owner of US Paint,
(then known as U.S. Paint Lacquer and Chemical Co) a small industrial coatings
manufacturer located in St. Louis, MO became acquainted with the technology as
result of a chance meeting in a bar with a representative from the Bayer Company
while Dilschneider was on a vacation in Germany.
As legend has it the man from Bayer was describing a problem
that was prevalent as a result of the development of the new chemical for the
aviation industry developed by another St. Louis company, Monsanto. That
chemical was called Skydrol® and was a phosphate ester liquid used for the
hydraulic controls in aircraft. Skydrol
had many wonderful characteristics that made it a good hydraulic fluid for that
application but acted like a paint remover to the aircraft paints and coatings
of that time. The legend continues that this conversation
was the inspiration for the commercial development of polyurethanes to be used
for painting airplanes. Mr.
Dilschneider went back to his laboratory at US Paint and presented his chemists
with the challenge of developing a coating which would resist attack by
Skydrol. Dilschneider directed his team
to look at the Bayer technology thinking this might be a viable commercial use
for this largely unused type of coating.
In 1964 Monsanto, McDonnell Douglas, and U.S. Paint teamed
up to paint the first Douglas DC-9 with what would become Alumigrip. As the St. Louis connection continues it
should be noted that first DC-9 was delivered to Ozark Airlines, which was
headquartered in St. Louis as well. This
ultimately led to the development and introduction of what is believed to be
the first commercial product used exclusively as an aviation paint, which was called
Alumigrip. Through the 1960’s US Paint
built on the success of its new product and developed strong business
relationships with McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed, Beechraft, and Cessna, among
others. Dilschneider acted on the early
success with the DC-9 and made a deal with Bayer where US Paint was the
exclusive importer to the US for Bayer’s patented curing agent technology for
the product.
In the late 60’s Dilschneider sold US Paint to Grow Chemical
Corporation. Under Grow ownership and
Disschneder’s directing US Paint continued to develop polyurethane
coatings. The Alumigrip brand was
introduced and the market for the technology continued to develop. During the 70’s US Paint, though maintaining
a strong relationship with Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, CA began to
concentrate its efforts on the business and general aviation markets. By the end of the 80’s Alumigrip was almost
exclusively used in business aviation –for many years it was the standard
coating for private jets and other executive aircraft produced by Beech,
Cessna, Lear Jet, Gulfstream, Falcon, and Sabreliner just to name a few. The product was not limited to passenger air
planes however. Sikorsky used Alumigrip
exclusively for application on helicopter fleets. Also Air Tractor appreciated the toughness of
the coating which allowed them to use their bright yellow color to coat their crop
dusters.
US Paint had a long list of celebrities with what seemed to
be bizarre requests for special colors.
These included matching colors on countless logos, fabrics, cocktail
napkins, china jewelry and parts off of various types of planes, boats and
automobiles. During the 70’s and early
80’s it seemed as if every day’s mail had another sample of something to match
for someone’s aircraft. By now more than 5,000 colors had been
formulated in the Alumigrip line. Please
see below one of the earliest color cards of the Alumigrip standard colors. VINTAGE COLOR CARD, circa 1975.
Also interesting is the shown ad below, circa 1984, which speaks
of the pioneering aspect of Alumigrip and features one of US Paint’s most
beloved salesmen ever, Orville Wilbur Wright, a descendent of THE Wright
brothers. Orville ad for Alumigrip
In the 1990’s low VOC. requirements for aircraft coatings
caused US Paint (then owned by Nippon Oil and Fats of Japan) to take another
look at the commercial aviation market and they developed High Solids Alumigrip
which quickly developed a following among the world’s airlines which continues
today under the direction of Akzo Nobel.
Today Alumigrip is again being used to coat air craft of every type and
size.
Nick Hall Dick
Creek
VP Sales President
AWLGRIP
North America AeroCoat
Source, LLC
