How to Measure the Thickness of Automotive Paint Film?

Studying used cars should know that to determine whether a used car accident has occurred, a useful test method is to check the thickness of the car paint. The paint finishes of different cars are actually different. Some are different types of car paints, some have different hardnesses and some have different thicknesses. Many people think that the car paint must be thicker because it will be more abrasion-resistant, but is this really the case?

1. The type of car paint

There may be three common automotive paints on the market. They are ordinary paint, metallic paint and pearl paint.

Ordinary paint is the most common one and is composed of resins, pigments and additives.
Metallic paint is made of aluminum powder, copper powder and other metal particles on the basis of ordinary paint. It looks shiny in the sun.
       The difference between pearl lacquer and metal lacquer is not very large. When mica particles are added on the basis of ordinary lacquer, the color changes at different light angles and the reflectivity is good.

2. Car paint hardness

The hardness index mainly depends on the "clear coat" in the paint layer, that is, the outermost layer. That is to say, the four-sided paint has become the three-sided paint, which is much thinner than before, but this does not affect the scratch resistance of the car paint. The average hardness of the coating is H and the hardness is 2H. Some high-end automotive surface paints may be harder, even up to 3H or 4H.

3. Car paint thickness

Studying used cars should know that to determine whether a used car accident has occurred, a useful test method is to check the thickness of the car paint. In the event of a recoating accident, the average paint thickness will exceed 200 microns, while the original paint thickness will typically be between 110 microns and 140 microns. So this is not to say that the thicker the paint, the better. As for the degree of wear resistance, it has nothing to do with the thickness of the coating.
       Previous automotive coatings actually consisted of four layers, consisting of a primer electrophoretic paint, an intermediate coating, a paint layer and a varnish layer. The average paint thickness of a German car is a bit thicker than that of a Japanese car. In this case, it is generally believed that German cars are better, but there is actually no difference in quality. Because the current material technology has made progress, the same effect cannot be achieved with so many layers.

4. Automotive paint thickness measurement with car paint meter

With the development of new spray painting technology and the emergence of new processes, the spray painting of the intermediate coating is gradually cancelled, but this method does not discard the intermediate coating. It uses a new process to combine the function and color coating of the intermediate coating. In this way, the paint can ensure that it has the function of blocking ultraviolet rays and abrasion resistances. So it is not that the thinner the paint on a car, the worse it is.So how do we know the thickness of automotive paint film clearly? You can use Linshang LS220 car paint meter to identify the thickness of automotive paint film. LS220 car paint meter is a professional instrument used to detect the thickness of automotive paint film. The instrument has analog signal terminal digitization function and digital probe technology, which can ensure the stability of the paint film sensor signal and provide the instrument with good test accuracy.