Painting of Automobiles

How painting of automobiles and cars is done and which ingredients are used in paint of a car? An automobile is mostly made from steel sheets. When it is exposed to air, the steel tends to produce rust on it. Once rust starts to grow over the steel objects, it becomes difficult to keep the characteristics of steel like its strength and even its original shape. Thus by painting over it, rust is prevented from growing on it and it becomes possible to retain its original characteristics much longer than without being painted.

The paint is a liquid of a high viscosity made up from the various ingredients evenly mixed up. Normally, the paint is used after it is diluted with an appropriate amount of thinner so that it can be easily applied. The ingredients of paint are as follows:

1. Pigments

The pigment is a powder of extremely tiny particles insoluble in water, oil and any other solvent. It gives colour and a filling up effect to the paint.

2. Resins

The resin is a main constituent of paint, together with pigment it forms a paint layer which is normally a sticky transparent liquid. After being painted on an object (automobile) and dry hardened, it becomes a paint layer. The quality of resin affects the finish (luster, brightness), the easiness of work (drying, polishing), and the quality of paint layer (hardness, anti-solution, weather proofing).

3. Solvent

It is a liquid for melting resin to make pigments and resin mix easily. Since various kinds of resins are used in paint, therefore, to dissolve them all, different kinds of solvents must be used.

4. Thinner

The thinner is a mixture of several solvents and is added in paints to optimize its viscosity so that paint can be applied easily. It is made up of several different soluble liquids. The solvents and thinner evaporates as the paint dries and does not remain in the paint layer.

5. Additives

These are added to improve the characteristics and quality of paint and paint layers.

6. Hardener

It is used to make paint film hard. Acrylic urethane paint is mainly used for car paint repair along with isocyanine chemical as hardener.