CC Thickness

[galaxy]

Got a quick question I could find the answer to. Never done any wetsanding and not really considering it, but like knowing about stuff...although it would be awesome to have a paint job with literally zero orange peel!!

Anyways, with using a paint meter, how do you know, or how can you tell how much CC you have?? Doesn`t the reading give you the total thickness of primer, paint, cc and everything?

[C. Charles Hahn]

There are a few (very expensive) PTGs out there that can tell you the thickness of each individual layer of coating on a substrate, but for the most part yes you will only know the thickness of the total film build.

As a rule of thumb (at least the one I follow), if you don`t know exactly how much clear you`ve got to work with (as in, you didn`t spray it out yourself or talk directly to the person who did -OR- you don`t know what if any previous sanding and/or buffing has been done) you should be looking to remove as little as possible during the sanding stages themselves... meaning start with 2000 grit or finer and only get more aggressive if you absolutely have to. Check your progress often, lest you remove more than you thought you were going to.

[Beemerboy]

Most cars painted today at the factory are 3 millimeters thick if that`s what you are asking.

[togwt]

1 mil = 0 .001", 1000th of an inch or 25.4 µ. As a point of reference a sheet of copy paper is 3.5Mil (89 µ) One micron is roughly 1/80th of the thickness of a human hair (hair thickness depends on hair colour/ethnic origin etc)

Most vehicle paint film systems (127 - 178 µ) which comprise a Primer coat of 2Mils (50 µ) and a Colour coat of 1-2Mils (25 -50 µ) and Clear coat 2-3Mils (50 - 75 µ) a surface scratch that will `catch` your fingernail is approximately 0.04 Mil (1.0 µ) deep will usually require wet sanding and refinishing.

Generally speaking the clear coat makes up 50% of the total paint thickness. The paint system is split 50-25-25% please note that this is a very general approximation

Measure the inside of door; this will give you an approximation of the paint system minus the clear coat. The difference between readings inside the door and on the exterior paintwork gives the thickness of the clear coat )it should be noted that some vehicles do have a clear coat)

Removing more that 0.5 mil (12µ) of clear coat will cause premature paint film failure as the ultra violet (UV) protection percolates to the top of the clear coat, there is ultra violet (UV) protection all the way through the paint, but the majority of it migrates to the top of the clear coat along with the thinner solvents and particles. Therefore removing clear coat ultra violet protection is not a linear process; by removing a small percentage of the clear coat paint tends to remove a larger percentage of UV inhibitors. So once you remove too much clear coat you`ll have no paint UV protection other than what you apply with a LSP

As a point of reference a sheet of copy paper is 3.5Mil (89µ) a surface scratch that will `catch` your fingernail is approximately 0.004 Mil (0.01µ) deep will usually require wet sanding and refinishing.

[tuscarora dave]

Most cars painted today at the factory are 3 millimeters thick if that`s what you are asking.

3 millimeters or 3 Mil. ? There is a huge difference between the two. I don`t mean to be a dink but 3 millimeters seems like an awful thick film build. Maybe you can share with us the source of this info.?..