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Ask the Expert Question-and-Answer Archive by Ron Joseph December, 2005 Curing Automotive Coatings Using Heat Q. I am trying to decide if I should put in a Junair QAD system in my current spray booth that will speed up the paint finish process. I am presently doing 5 cars per day in my booth now and am being told I can do an extra 1-2 cars per day by reducing my flash off time (up to 70%) and bake time (up to 45%). What are your thoughts on this? A. I do not know the Junair QAD System, therefore let me give you a generic answer. Heating of paint can be advantageous to speed up the drying and curing of coatings, but you must insure that you don't overheat the coating and more importantly, you must first flash off all or most of the solvents. If the high temperature hits the painted car too quickly you might form a skin of cured paint that prevents entrapped solvents from getting out. If that happens you will have serious paint blistering or worse, peeling. Allow sufficient time for the solvents to evaporate and you can assist this
by increasing the airflow around the paint. The disadvantage of increasing the
airflow is that you might deposit dirt in the fresh paint. When the solvents
have essentially evaporated, increase the temperature slowly. Best wishes, |