PAINT

PAINT

Paint by Camille has gone green and is currently in the process of switching over to the newly mandated water based paint.

QUALITY PAINT JOBS:

STREET > more

TRACK/ RACE > more

WE ARE GREEN / WATERBOURNE PAINT

The waterborne paint system is a way to reduce the emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the air. California is the first state in the US to regulate the implementation of a state law requiring auto body shops to use water based base coats instead of the solvent based ones.

Legally in California as of June 1, 2008 all auto body shops must convert to water-based base coats. What that means is: every new car produced since the mid 80’s (with some exceptions with foreign cars in the past 3+ years) has been done with a two stage paint finish. The color is the base coat, and the clear coat is the top coat, hence two stage painting. Some cars even have three stages (color-base coat, pearl mid-coat and clear coat).

Since the mid 80’s all the base coats have been solvent (petroleum) based. These are very harmful to the environment. But there was no other way to make the paint. The solvents used are really 50% of the base coat which is the harmful part. As the base coat is shot onto the car it immediately realeases pollutants and evaporates into the air.

The clear coats are usually only mixed with a catalyst and the pollutants going into the air are much lower than in the base coats.

To help reduce pollutants greatly the base coat was the one engineers have focused on altering. After years of research engineers managed to develop high-quality base coats that are WATER based (instead of solvent based) making them almost completely harmless to the environment (an approximately 90% harmful emmisions reduction). This is a momentus shift in automotive paint refinishing.

Going from shooting solvent based base coat to water based is like going from riding a bicycle to riding a unicycle. There is a certain speed and style that goes into applying base coat. Because of the shift to a water based system there now is the need to allow much more time for the drying of the coat. The solvent based system evaporated much faster than water based: a three layer application of solvent based base coat on a small repair job in an ideal temperature may take 15 minutes to dry. While with a water based base coat that time may increase to about 45 minutes. I’ve found the increase to be at least three times longer. So on a big job that may translate to hours or even a day of added time.

The waterborne paint products have been used in Europe for about 15 years.

 

Read: Waterborne Coatings