Alsa Corp Soft Touch paint?

Tim (Socal) has used it. Last I knew, they only offered a clear soft touch to be applied over a base coat.

It's important that top coatings be applied over the same chemistry as the base coat and within the proper window to get a chemical bond.

Along with poor soft touch, Ferrari sub contractors often did not do this.

I have access to several soft touch coatings but I'm too afraid to use them as nobody knows the long term effects.

 

Daves correct I use it

$$$$$$$ works great. Takes a while to get proper build thickness
Any experienced car painter will get it figured out in a few weeks.

 

So, today we received 488 parts to refinish. Yep, 488. Not sticky but the clear soft touch is peeling.

 

488 parts failing haha.


Honestly if this stuff wasnt so much Id try it but kinda expensive for testing and like Dave said no idea on the long term.

 

Long term is still out

Also to get the "correct feel" you use lots of paint that can make things not fit like they should. Paint is just a bit too thick for some things

Another reason to go with Sticky Daves way

 

What people need to also consider is rework. One could do brain surgery in my facility but it's not a clean room. When we get dust in the finish now, we sand and spray again. Not so much with soft touch and every coat is thick so as Tim said, fitment will be an issue.

Porche, McLaren and others all use hard touch coatings now and for good reason.

 

It's absurd!

 

In the OR, we have a laminar flow diffuser panel over the table and return grilles at floor level.

 

I wonder how difficult the stuff is to strip if you goof or the finish begins to fail.

I really don't feel like I'm missing anything by having a hard coating on my interior pieces but maybe it's of interest to absolute purists?

 

I used to run a company that designed and built clean air equipment and cleanrooms. I'm not sure how much room you need, but you can use local HEPA filtration to solve this problem. It could be a small 2 X 4 Laminar airflow (LAF) unit or a soft wall cleanroom with a few HEPA Fan filter Modules on top. If you need to exhaust the work area then you can incorporate that as well.

 

We have a professional paint booth but it's an open face so it draws in shop air. We will be buying or building a walk in booth soon. But, one must remember, we are talking about very small particles here and many steps are taken to help reduce it.

If we were painting hi gloss, no issue as a wet sand and buff could solve occasionall isssues but with low gloss coatings, no such rework is possible.

 

You got it, Matt. Was only trying to help you. I'm out

 

We call that an up draft spray booth