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Originally Posted by 94LT1  I was wondering wat range of numbers in microns would be a big warning sign and you would know not to use any swirlremover or polish? |
Here is the answer that I posted to a similar question on "another" forum.
As a follow up I will try to answer some more of the questions asked.
As far as I know this meter (and most if not all of the others) are sonic in nature. Like SONAR they bounce a sound pulse off of the metal base layer through all the "soft" paint layers above it. Then it calculates the thickness from the time it measures between the time the sound pulse is emitted and the time it gets it back. The measurement can be affected by temperature, air pressure, etc. that is why the meter should be calibrated with it's known thickness test strip before each days use.
There is no way for it to determine how thick the primer, color base coat, and the final top clearcoat are. The reason for using the meter is to let you know if the paint has been sanded before, or is it the original finish or a repaint etc.
As I posted in my original thread above, I measured the finish before and after sanding, and at each step along the way.
If you read the article that I provided a link to, it explains about the typical factory finish. That the average primer is one percentage of the total, the color base is another, and the final 25% is the top clearcoat. But you have no way of knowing if the finish has been worked on before. A good giveaway would be that the finish is absolutely perfect (showing that it may have been sanded before). So if a customer brought you a car that had perfect paint except for one key scratch you shoud be wary of sanding again. But if the same car was brought to you with tons of orangepeel you could assume that the paint is still at original factory applied thickness and it would be safe to sand out the key scratch.
But every car, case, and finish must be examined as a new case. Don't make any assumptions based on the job before it.
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