Autobody technician Jim Sieben takes a few minutes to warm up before getting down to work on an aluminum panel.

He fires up the welding torch and practises on scrap metal before touching the real thing.

“It’s just to get comfortable with it because it’s so different,” said Sieben, one of the few technicians in Edmonton trained in the highly specialized repair of aluminum auto bodies.

Many vehicles have long had some aluminum panels. Hoods and trunk lids, for example, and some luxury cars have bodies made of aluminum, which is lighter than steel and boosts a vehicle’s fuel economy.

But Ford’s introduction of the aluminum bodied 2015 F-150 could be a game-changer for the mainstream autobody repair industry as it increasingly invests in the tools and training to repair the metal.

On Wednesday, partners Waterloo Ford Lincoln and Empire Collision officially opened Waterloo-Empire Collision, a repair shop with facilities to handle aluminum and a technician — Sieben — trained in the techniques.

Randall Purvis, president and CEO of Waterloo, said the shop contains about $85,000-$100,000 worth of new aluminum-repair equipment and sealed, vented bays to prevent cross-contamination between aluminum and steel body repairs.

“It’s the future,” Purvis said.

“With this new F-150, it’s 30 per cent of our sales. I don’t want anybody to have an accident, but when they do have an accident, I want to be able to fix it.”

Fixing aluminum body parts is an acquired skill because the metal is unforgiving, said Bill Johnson, general manager of Empire Collision.

“With steel … if there was an error or mistake in your weld, you could come back and fix it,” he said.

“With aluminum, you can’t do that anymore. You only have one chance to weld it.”

Technicians must take care not to overheat aluminum, which ruins the metal. It’s also less malleable than steel.

But the weight savings of aluminum are alluring to automakers looking to improve fuel economy. The new F-150 is 317 kilograms lighter than older steel models and Ford says the truck’s mileage is as much as 29 per cent better.

Aluminum supplier Alcoa Inc. estimates the aluminum body sheet content in vehicles will increase 11-fold between 2012 and 2025.

Johnson said the autobody industry will adapt.

“It’s just another evolution of the vehicle that we have to keep up to speed with,” Johnson said.