Paint thickness gauge
When buying a used car, it is always a great dilemma to decide whether you are really buying a beautiful, sparkling, spared and damage-free piece or a worn wreck that has been reworked several times. Even the most seasoned professionals can not see every defect, especially if the paint specialist is a real artist. The smart way to determine the paint thickness is the use of a paint thickness gauge, which does not damage the vehicle. The other method is to the scratch the surface by grinding, however this hardly will be allowed at any dealership or salon. The paint thickness has to be measured at several parts on the car body (the latest models are capable of continuous measuring), small differences are acceptable. The deviation between different parts should not be large, if it is, the part or parts are damaged. The paint thickness on Japanese vehicles is 70-120 microns, on the German vehicles 90-140 microns - this value can vary up to 200 microns, this is still counts as factory paint work. Over 200 microns the vehicle has been certainly re-painted, even the most skilled hand painter specialist can not achieve a result under this value. A good paint work result in a layer up to 200-300 microns, a value over 300 microns indicates a putty filling. The paint thickness gauge is not only useful when buying a used car, it can also be used to check the quality of the of paint works. After treatments with compressed air, Airless, Mix, powder-coating the paint thickness can be easily measured. An overly thin paint layer on a metal surface can lead to repeated rustiness, the porous separation of the paint layer. If too many layers are deposited on the surface, the paint can contract and acquire an orange-peel structure, hairline fractures can form. This can easily be avoided by measuring the paint layer thickness - after a too thin layer another can be painted on, but after the dry-down of every layer the necessity for a new layer should be checked.
