How to Keep The Paint Thin in Your Substrate Surface?

by: RUDY OKTAVIAN

The Need of Maintaining Paint Thickness

We understand that the paint thickness affects to strength or adhesiveness of the substrate, means that the thinner layers the more flexible to follow the substrates movement and more resistant to the changes of ambient temperature. That is why paint thickness is part of quality criteria in finished products. Nowadays, many modern furniture companies very concern about this issue, especially when their customers are mostly located in areas with 4 seasons. They measure and ensure the thickness of paint on any product not more than 4.5 mils (114.3 microns).

What Happen if Paint Thickness More Than 4.5 Mils?

Cold check or check on top coat surface will be potentially occurred when paint thickness more than 4.5 mils (114.3 microns). Actually finishing schedule must be well setup so that overall thickness still in the tolerance range. The choice of paint type is very important, as some paint type may have higher solid content  and better cover-ability than the others. Substrate grain character is also very decisive. Few method may work to make surface more flat and lesser grain, such as optimizing the use of filler before staining, glue sizing and increase sealer and top coat solid content.

It's not Easy!

If you are concerned on the importance of keeping the thickness of paint on the finishing surface, then you often encountered the dilemma between keeping the thickness of the paint, maintain the surface flatness and keep it crisp.

Keeping the paint remains on the thickness tolerance is not an easy job, as several factors such as the rework where the substrate surface is not washed off prior to the refinish, wood grain properties is too open/porous and wild while a closed pore look is desired, grain filling before finish is not implemented properly and human error on excessive sealer/lacquer spraying.

The hardest part is when you were dealing with solid color/painting, as due to just a little failure you must pay it with a lot rework. Production cost could reach twice or more than normal, as it back and forth many times in finishing process.

The keywords that need to be aware is, be detail! In every stage since preparation, assembling and finally finishing, we should ensure each detail such as dimension, shape/profile, joints, construction strength, etc so that problem could be detected earlier and avoid an accumulation problem as well.

Good Luck! :-)