Cost-cutting Productivity Upgrades

All paint spray booths only offer: lighting, clean air, warm enough air, and high enough airflow.  We offer a 28 page Painting Problems Manual- an auto body painting guide, no charge, to train your painters and troubleshoot repaint causes.

The better your booth does the following, the greater your profits:

• Exact color matching to avoid repaints.

• Acceptable and even paint layer thickness.

• Less contamination caused buffing and repainting.

• Faster cure times.

• Switching to waterborne paint.

Lighting for color matching and paint thickness:

Customers judge their car’s paint quality by viewing it in sunlight.  Precise painting quality requires that cabin lighting be as close to noon sunlight as possible.  The terms “Daylight” and “Full Spectrum” are widely abused.  Finding the best value means understanding bulb ratings and how we see color. 

Light bulbs

All lightbulbs are rated for the following four elements:

• Lumens – the brightness of the light.  This is generally driven by the wattage of the bulb.

• Color Rendering Index (CRI) – the % of an even mix of red, green and blue.  Noon sunlight is 100%, surgical suites are 90% minimum.  Below 80% and our eyes increasingly see colors as less saturated, causing painters to lay down un-needed layers, wasting paint and forcing longer cure times.  Over 86 CRI is not noticeable by our eyes for painting.  If the CRI is at least 80, the Color Temperature (CT) becomes much more important.

• Color Temperature (CT) – in degrees Kelvin(°K).  The “spectrum” temperature at which the mix of gases inside the bulb, produce light.  The “white” sunlight band varies from 5,000°K to 6,500°K with the ideal CT at 6,000°K.  As bulbs age, the CT drops (color shifting), after many years they become increasingly yellow below 4,500°K.  6,500°K bulbs are the best value.  Initially they have a slight bluish tint, after about 100 hours they “burn in” to pure white light.  High CT increases brightness perception to our eye, so lesser wattage can be used, saving electricity.

•  Life Span, or Rated Life, or Lamp Life – is the rated bulb life.  Bulb makers calculate as follows:  A 24,000 hour Life Span is actually 1,000 – 24 hour days with the bulb lighted 10 hours per day.  That means the tested bulbs were actually only lighted 10,000 hours with only half still working.  This rating does not predict Lumen drop-off or CT color shifting problems at about 70% of the rated Life Span.

Our Model HALID6½K 400 watt halide bulb is the highest rated combination at 82 CRI and 6,500°K in the lighting industry.  The Life Span is rated at 24,000 hours.

Ballasts

Ballasts are critical to bulb performance.  The OEM and still standard ballast is the coil-core transformer ballast.  Bulbs turned on-off frequently and using standard core-coil ballasts age much faster.  New technology allows us to offer our Model 400BLLST 400 watt, halide electronic ballast which won’t degrade bulb life with frequent on-offs. 

Bulb brightness from the 400BLLST is 30% more than standard core/coil magnetic ballasts as no power is wasted to ballast heating.  Its microprocessor: compensates for aging bulbs, “soft starts” instant-on (cooled-off bulbs) with no power surge to extend bulb life, is dimmable to 250 watts, and can power boost to 420 watts. 

Instant-on mean painters no longer need the lights on all day due to slow-start concerns.  Retrofitting with our HALID6½K bulbs and 400BLLST ballasts can easily cut the cabin light usage time in half, saving electricity.  Customers report excellent painting at the 250 watt ballast setting because of the quality of the bulb’s white color, further saving another 40% on electricity.

As we age our eyes can’t see as well and get tired sooner.  Many older painters report that they have far fewer mistakes and will continue painting many more years because of the increased light quality.  All painters report that they don’t have the eye fatigue from the glare of the previous “yellowed” lighting and color match at the end of the day just as well. 

Eye fatigue is caused by core-coil magnetic ballasts that all turn on and off 60 times per second.  Look out the corner of your eye and see the flicker.  Our Model 400BLLST electronic ballast turns off and on 20,000 times per second, no flicker, no glare, minimal fatigue.

We offer the best national pricing on our online lighting catalog We offer a Halide Lighting Upgrade Guide, please tell us how many halide lamps you have, and we will quote a complete retrofit.  The guide also tells you how to do-it-yourself replace the light lenses.  They darken with age and hold back too much light.

Maximum Airflow, and Cleanest Filtered Air

Airflow needs to be sufficient to stop contamination from dirt and overspray.

Dirt has two sources: unfiltered air that gets around the ceiling intake filter, and dust sucked into to the cabin.

Unfiltered air gets around the ceiling filter because other than OEM Viledon filters are not thick enough (only 5/8”) to be pinched tightly by the side rail clamping system.  When off-brand ceiling filters load up and sag, the edges get increasingly pulled on and eventually pull out.  Our Model 3026 is a full ¾” thick Viledon filter.

Filter resellers buy in quantity to get a better price, selling them off months or years later.  When the filter is finally installed, the compressed fibers don’t separate or “loft” as the tacky glue, now dry, has them stuck together.  Less fiber surface is available and it is not tacky, so dirt passes by to the 10 micron final screen and plugs it up too soon. We buy fresh filters from a Viledon Master Distributor, and sell only one ceiling filter at a time for any booth, guaranteeing the tackiness.  The proof is the glue left on the installer’s hands.

Dirt sucked in is caused by excessive negative pressure in the cabin.  This is usually due to the lack of adjustment of the exhaust air flow, because of a problem with the exhaust damper, its cable (our Model 1944339) or damper motor (our Model DAMPRMTR.)

Overspray swirls when the exhaust slows too much.  The air-drying overspray will lay down over fresh wet paint, skin it over and cause solvent popping or a “marbled” surface that has to be buffed out.  The cabin pressure also becomes too positive forcing fumes out of the doors. The cause is usually a plugged pit filter or an overspray-caked exhaust duct and propeller.  Improving door seals won’t help.  We offer a Cabin Air Flow Management and Testing Guide.

Our Model 3075PROP (or 3050PROP) Nylon-fiberglass propeller is smoother and stiffer than the old aluminum one.  That, and being non-metallic, they resist overspray build-up and move over 20% more air for waterborne paints.  They can be pressure-washed in place.   We offer a Propeller Upgrade Guide, an Exhaust Duct Cleaning Guide, and Cabin Pressure Guides.

Waterborne paint conversion:

We offer air flow upgrades for the (waterwash) Model 1000 and the ADDvantage series.  The reason many shops hold off converting to waterborne paint is due to the high cost of add-on drying fan systems.

• The minimum air speed for waterborne paints is 150 feet per minute (FPM). Our upgrades achieved well over 150 FPM. No add-on fans needed.

• Upgrades include do-it-yourself removal of restrictions to the intake ducting. We offer an Intake Plenum Air Diverter & Intake Duct Upgrade & Cleaning Guide that shows all the needed modifications to the existing ducting.

• Upgrades for the Model 1000 cost about $2,000.00 and include high performance propellers and adding a frequency drive to the exhaust motor. The ADDvantage upgrades cost about $3,500.00 as the exhaust blower needs replacement. Contact us for an equipment quote.

• Older Spraybakes with 5 Hp. motors (24” ducting) need to be upsized to 7.5 Hp. motors (30” ducting), so add-on fans would likely be cheaper. Generally, from 1995 on, Spraybakes can be upgraded to dry waterborne paint without add-on fans.

• Our Model ANEMOMTR air speed and temperature gauge has a max air speed feature for the most accurate readings.