Paint thickness gauges $10-$15

[Trevine]

IMO who cares about paint thickness. Once you go deeper than the clear, it a whole different ball game and a costly mistake. Now if they could come out with a device that measures clear coat thickness, I am IN!. Too many times someone brings a car and we have NO idea age of paint, type of paint, original or not, has it already been correct, etc etc. What I really want to know is how aggressive I can be on the clear. Beyond that, and you are really in trouble and the customer will look at you for the causing the problem and fixing it.

[DBAILEY]

They do have PTG that will display the thickness of each layer based on the differing densities. They are like $2500 and up though.

[Trevine]

They do have PTG that will display the thickness of each layer based on the differing densities. They are like $2500 and up though.

EDIT: " if they came out with a reasonable priced gauge for clear coat, i would be in, otherwise, go light when questionable"

[RZJZA80]

The whole point of a paint meter is to know what you're dealing with, so it is an important thing to have when polishing and compounding. The cheaper ones won't tell you exactly how much clear you have but they will give you a good idea of how aggressive you can go in a particular area. If you're reading less than 100 microns you might not want to go crazy on the compounding, for example.

[Calendyr]

I have a big problem with the industry and hundreds-of-dollars for a thickness gauge..... it's a huge ripoff to the lamen. Was there a time when tape measures were hundred of dollars? It's simply stupid and its times like this where I say I am glad other companies are commoditizing stuff like this. Genericizing some products makes perfect sense for the consumer.

I purchased mine off ebay for about 150$ if memory serves. I works very well. The more expensive ones usually have the ability to read off composite materials like carbon fiber and fiberglass. But for metal panels, even if the tool was not as precise as the more expensive ones, a few microns difference are not gonna make or break your world. These tools are designed to give you an idea about what you are working with.

[Mgavin1985]

I bought it just to feel professional!

[Mgavin1985]

It’s arrived. I’m playing with it at what measurement does a person not do correcting so this thing only measures thickness not base, color, clear. Does anyone has experience with this.

[conman1395]

There's a big difference between reliability and accuracy. This is, apparently, very reliable but until compared with something that is accurate we can't know how well it actually performs.

To answer your question Mgavin, I don't polish paint if it is 20% thinner than the door jamb paint thickness. that is generally the thinnest part.

I'd really only use something like this (high reliability is useful even if proven inaccurate) without knowing the accuracy to make sure my substrate is what I think it is (AKA not bondo). I pretty much never polish over bondo unless I know more about how/where the repair was done.

[mwoolfso]

I purchased mine off ebay for about 150$ if memory serves. I works very well. The more expensive ones usually have the ability to read off composite materials like carbon fiber and fiberglass. But for metal panels, even if the tool was not as precise as the more expensive ones, a few microns difference are not gonna make or break your world. These tools are designed to give you an idea about what you are working with.

I agree. I think degrees of quality can justify commodity vs. specialized or unique pricing - and certainly going into secondary markets for used items make sense as well.

[conman1395]

I know that’s pretty crazy huh? I don’t really know what to make of it but at least it’s consistent with its readings. Lol.

Even stranger is that it won’t give me any reading at all on my brothers brand new Ford truck no matter where I test it. That’s the only vehicle it draws a complete blank on.

The new Ford trucks are aluminum. So it doesn't work on anything but steel panels then?