Does Car Paint Need Baking?
2 Answers
Car paint needs baking to enhance the vehicle's appearance. Here is an introduction to car paint baking: 1. Baking time: Original factory high-temperature baking for car paint typically takes about half an hour per coat. Repair paints are usually air-drying types, requiring low-temperature baking in a booth at 6-80 degrees Celsius for half an hour to one hour. 2. Environment during paint application: When paint is applied at the manufacturing plant, it is done in a fully enclosed, dust-free specialized room to achieve better results. 3. Both the baking temperature and paint spray guns are professionally computer-controlled, with temperatures around 200 degrees Celsius, as there are no plastic parts inside the vehicle during paint application. The spray guns are also high-precision computer-controlled. This ensures the gloss and aesthetic quality of the vehicle's paint.
I'm a veteran with 20 years in auto body painting, and baking car paint is absolutely essential! Freshly sprayed paint may look glossy, but it's full of solvents inside. It needs to be baked in a paint booth at around 60°C for half an hour to harden into an armor-like finish. Otherwise, a fingernail scratch will leave marks, and bubbles may appear on rainy days. Last time, a car owner insisted on saving money by skipping the baking step, and three months later, the entire paint layer peeled off—ending up costing three times more for a repaint. Original factory paint lasts a decade precisely because it's baked at 200°C. While we can't reach that temperature for touch-ups, even low-temperature baking is ten times better than air drying.
