Automotive Paint Timeline

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Over the ten decades of the last century, all innovations and developments in the OEM and refinish markets have brought two important contributions to the industry: improved quality in all respects and of course, speed. The object for the user is always to finish, and refinish, faster. Advancements have always brought improvements in preparation time, application time and degree of difficulty and very importantly, drying time. When the auto industry began, in the days of painstaking manual labor, finishes were applied much as they were for the auto’s predecessor, the carriage–by hand, with a brush. These early auto paints, while easily touched up by the car’s owner if damaged, had their own significant drawbacks. Finish quality from early India enamel was mediocre and there were few colors in the primarily dark earth-tone palette. The name comes from the paint’s relation to India ink, a pigment made from lamp black, with no relation to the country India. Durability of the finish was also weak, as these enamels were very prone to sun fade. Originally, Ditzler paint was applied with a brushEven though it was applied using a brush, early innovations in coatings technology by Ditzler improved the speed of automotive paint operations. The lack of coatings that were easy to apply, more durable, and fast drying, became obvious handicaps to the efficient production of the motorcar. As advances in chemistry were discovered in the laboratory, advances in coatings technology were close behind. Nitrocellulose paints were developed in the early 1920s which greatly improved on earlier shortcomings in ease of application and drying time. The nitrocellulose used in these finishes is a very close relative to the explosive gun cotton used in smokeless powder in firearms cartridges. The starting substance is purified wood cellulose which is then processed by soaking in a

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