Hey, Shawn here from 3M.
Thanks for joining me.
Today's topic is automotive foams, which ones to use
and how to use them.
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First, let's make sure we're using the proper PPE.
Secondly, keep in mind these videos are
made for a professional setting, such as a collision repair
shop.
If you want to learn more about our safety and warranty
information, I've included a link in the description below.
Let's get started.
OK, so let's talk about these different foams.
Now, we have three foams here.
Two of them are expandable.
One is non-expandable.
And I'll get to that later.
But let's talk about these individually.
So this is a flexible foam.
This is a urethane foam.
It's expandable.
And it's really designed to mitigate noise
or possibly even airflow through the vehicle.
This foam is very spongy and very dense
by the way, which is what allows it to absorb noise.
Now, typical areas you may see this in on a vehicle,
sometimes behind some panels, like perhaps on a door skin
to an intrusion beam.
You may find it up in a sail panel
when you replace a quarter panel, sometimes down
in that quarter panel dogleg area.
But it could be really anywhere on a vehicle.
So when we're using this foam, there
are special techniques and special things we need to know,
in order to use it properly.
And again, we'll talk about that more later.
Now, this second foam is our 8458.
It's a rigid pillar foam.
So this is, as the name says, it's rigid.
So if you look at it and actually push on it,
you'll see that it doesn't rebound
like a flexible foam does.
It will actually crush.
And it's very specifically designed
to stop panels from moving, fluttering, flexing, et
cetera, which could actually cause
the panels to eventually crack.
It's a completely different foam than the flexible foam.
So you have to, again, know where to use this foam.
Now, when we talk about where do we use the foam,
the first thing you're going to want to do
is look at the OEM service information.
Now, they're not always going to tell you which foams to use
and where, but sometimes they may.
As a matter of fact, this bulletin
here talks about, first of all, removing the foam
from the vehicle before you get started replacing.
And then, this one here from Nissan actually
tells you, by part number, to use the 8463 flexible foam.
So that's the first place you want
to start when trying to determine which foam to use
for a specific application.
Now, beyond that, if you don't have that OEM information,
you're going to really use the characteristics of the foam
to decide which product you're going to use.
So in other words, we're going to look at this foam.
The foam we remove from the vehicle, is it flexible,
does it rebound when you push on it?
That's typically to mitigate noise,
we're going to use a flexible foam.
On the other hand, if you push on it
and it crushes like the rigid foam,
that's the case where you're going
to use that rigid pillar foam.
So it's not always cut and dried and spelled out for you.
Sometimes, you're going to have to use
some common sense to determine which foam you're going to use.
Now, the one I haven't mentioned yet is the NVH material.
So this material here does not expand.
A lot of people don't really pay a lot of attention
to this foam, but it's a really critical foam in this system
here because it can be used to reattach existing foam.
So for example, if I removed foam from a cavity,
if I could save that shape, sometimes, there
are very unique shapes and hard to duplicate.
If I can remove that and save it,
I can actually bond it back in with this material here.
But this material can also be used
in some cases as a standalone foam, where you can put it
behind panels or between, for example again,
door skin to the reinforcement beam,
or perhaps the roof bows to the roof skin.
So it's a very versatile foam.
And we'll talk more about that as we
go through these individually.
So stay tuned, we're going to talk about all of these forms
individually in detail.
And we're going to show you how they're going
to be used in future videos.
Hey, as always, thanks for joining me
for this video today.
Please comment below, share, and hit that subscribe button.
Also, please check out our 3M Collision Repair Academy.
There are links in the description below.
See you next time.
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