Quote:
Originally Posted by advs1
why do people say you have to wait for paint to cure before waxing? or washing? or sanding?
i have been working with body shops for decades, and each and every one washes, color sands/buffs and waxes the cars 1 day after painting. not saying they do the best job finishing, but even high end cars are handled the same. i have painted a few panels myself and seeing all the activator and infrared lights used to cure them, i dont see how waiting 2 months makes a difference?
and now in cali we have water borne paints that are way different than the older base coat/clear coat. i have been working with a painter recently and he's been showing me the new system and that paint is rock hard!
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I agree. Would bodyshops hand the newly repaired cars back to the customers while the cars are covered in thick bodyshop dust? Probably not. Waxing, of course, is a different story. Solvent still needs to be able to scape, and wax hinders the evaporation process.
I have wetsanded and buffed new paint jobs literally 5hrs after they were flash baked with infrared or UV lights. No issue whatsoever. In fact, the paints were fairly hard then. Of course, being new paint jobs, I still opted for gentle methods for sanding marks removal by using a PFW and
M105.
And you are correct, for environmental waste, energy saving, and health reasons, the bodyshop industry is slowly transitioning from using solvent based paints to water based paints. Solvent based paints is believe by the European Union agencies to be a source of skin and nasal cancer among autoworkers.
Water based paints cure much quicker. They
can also finish much smoother in some cases than solvent based paint with skilled techniques. I am extremely impressed by some of the quality and durability of water based paints. They don't even smell as strong as solvent based paints.