We have discussed the quality of PPG water borne paint here on the Blog. Some of you may be wondering what kind of equipment you will need to convert your body shop. This article will answer all your questions regarding shop equipment. The conversion to waterborne basecoats will positively impact your day to day shop operations and your equipment. Fortunately the changes will not be too intimidating. On the bright side they will help make your life easier and more productive as well.
The best feature of the new PPG waterborne system is that there is no mechanical agitation required to achieve great color matches. This is a result of PPG’s revolutionary new anti-settle technology. Simply rock the toner side to side by hand and that’s all that is required to ensure the tint has all the pigments dispersed evenly and then it is ready to pour. This makes color mixing fast and easy. No longer does a painter need to wait fifteen minutes when changing a toner or upon arriving to work in the morning, just shake and pour. What does this mean then, this means no more loud mixing machine in your paint room adding extra noise to your work day and no more wait times decreasing your daily production. We get paid to paint vehicles not stand around playing the waiting game. Think about the time you will save during the course of a year.
A dedicated spray gun used exclusively for water borne base coat. PPG recommends using a dedicated paint gun for waterborne base coats and should not be used with solvent based paints, just as you do not use your base coat gun to spray clear coat. I know what you probably thinking, we will have to buy more spray guns for our shop. Not when you switch to PPG’s Envirobase. PPG is going to give their existing shops and their new clients a dedicated waterborne gun. If your shop has two booths than you will receive two paint guns, one dedicated paint gun per booth. While we understand you could make one of your existing paint guns a waterborne gun, considerations should be given to the technology improvements manufacturers have made with this most valuable tool. The spray gun must be rust proof, which means it should be made of stainless steel, brass or plastic components. Many spray gun manufactures have specific gun, cap and fluid tip recommendations. Since water and aluminum can cause corrosion, aluminum cups will be replaced by plastic cups or other systems such as 3M’s PPS system or the Sata RPS system which use plastic. The required strainer size for waterborne base is 125 micron.
Please come back to the Blog as I will elaborate on some of the other key pieces of equipment your shop will need to make the switch to PPG Envirobase waterborne basecoat. There are some other ingredients to make your shop the most productive most successful shop on the block.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Erik // May 30, 2008 at 2:08 am
Yeah !! Nice information for PPG water borne.
2 mike // May 30, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Thanks Erik, I will be adding many more articles to the Blog so please come back as I will be writing often.
Thanks for the comment.
Here’s to your success.
~Mike.
3 Kyle // Jun 18, 2008 at 5:43 am
Great to know the benefits of waterborn basecoats.
4 mike // Jun 18, 2008 at 11:07 am
Thanks Kyle, I like many others was a little scared at first but all my fears went away after I was trained on how to use water borne base.
The characteristics I love most about PPG’s water borne base coat is the speed in witch it dries and the way it blends out.
Awesome product,
Thanks for the comment,
~Mike.
5 Billy Duggins // Dec 30, 2009 at 11:08 pm
I have a qestion for you. How long have u been using EHP?
Been abot 9 months since we switched form Autocolor to EHP,I must say i will never go back. My question is about blending silver colors. I seemto have the most dificulty with lending silvers like 1co(toyota) or Wa 994l(gm). Do u have any suggestions?
6 mike // Dec 30, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Hey Billy, I was a PPG representative for a year and a half. I was trained on Envirobase before it was available on the market here in my province. I have since went back into a GM dealer and into the paint booth full time. So using EHP now for two years, selling and spraying together.
My questions or suggestions to you are this, what kind of gun are you using. Do you use a wet bed before you spray your color. I use T490 4:1 reduction and spray that on the panel/panels after I have sealed new panels or a primed area. I blow dry and apply color at 25 Psi for my first two coats which you probably already know, then drop your air pressure to 17 psi and do your control coat six inches past your last coat of base. I use Iwata W-400 to apply my base. I tilt my gun at a 45 degree angle and fog the control coat out when I blend out. That seems to help with a uniform look.
I will shoot a video for you soon so you can see how I do my blends, that way you can see it done. I feel that video will be better than me trying to write about it. I learn better visually than I do from reading.
Thanks for the questions,
~Mike.
7 Jimmo // Apr 19, 2010 at 10:41 am
We just finished our changeover, went with RM Onyx. I’d be interested to see how PPG compares.
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