ISO 8503-01

Introducing ISO 8503-1 - Industrial Physics

ISO 8503-1 is an international ISO standard procedure that will help you to assess abrasive, blast-cleaned surfaces of steel substrates before applying protective paints and coatings.

Regular maintenance and retreating with protective coatings limits degradation and prevents the onset of rust. Proper steel substrate preparation is important as it ensures the long-term performance of any protective coatings you apply.

Surface roughness testing of blast-cleaned steel substrates to ISO 8503-1 will help you to prepare your steel substrates effectively. The documents give you specifications, definitions and surface profile comparators for accurate assessment of various abrasive, blast-cleaned surfaces.

What factors influence steel substrate preparation?

The main factors that can influence steel substrate performance and preparation can be categorized as follows:

Presence of rust and mill scale

Presence of surface contaminants, including salts, dust, oils and greases

Surface profile.

ISO 8503-1 solves blast-clean conundrums

It doesn’t matter what type of equipment you use, or the process you follow, any time you blast-clean a surface, you’ll encounter random irregularities. These show themselves as peaks and valleys that aren’t easy to predict or characterize.

Due to this random nature, no method is capable of giving a precise value for the profile. So, profiles are identified as either dimpled (where shot abrasives are used) or angular (where grit abrasives are used). The ISO 8503-01 standard defines the limits of irregularities that can be graded as "fine", "medium" or "coarse". These surface characteristics give sufficient distinguishing visual and tactile features for most painting requirements.

This part of ISO 8503 specifies the limits for the "fine", "medium" and "coarse" surface for both dimpled and angular profiles, and specifies the design of ISO comparators for reference purposes.

These ISO 8503 comparators can be used to assess the roughness profile of other abrasive blast-cleaned substrates too. They’re not just useful for painting surfaces.

ISO 8503-1 testing devices

So, how can Industrial Physics improve your ISO 8503-1 testing?

Steel surface roughness comparator

Made by our paint testing brand TQC Sheen, our steel surface roughness comparator helps you to compare abrasive, blast-cleaned surfaces of steel substrates.

It’s a helpful surface roughness comparator that can be used in accordance with ISO 8503-1, ISO 8503-2 and ASTM D4417.

Pretreatment test kit (PTK)

Our pretreatment test kit is a brilliant support for your ISO 8503-1 testing. It was designed to control all of the relevant parameters during the pretreatment of steel prior to painting.

The strong double walled suitcase holds a smart selection of inspection tools and measuring devices to assist the paint inspector on a survey to inspect blast cleaned steelwork.

We have a basic and a full kit available depending on your ISO testing requirements. Both models include a bresle test for surface and blast media measurements, a dust test kit and a telescopic inspection mirror.

Your global test and inspection partner for ISO 8503-1