Dupont Chromax Waterborne Paint
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Hey y’all,
so we will be switching to Dupont Chromax in a few weeks, i will be going for training on it soon. I’d be interested to hear what to expect, tips and product recommendations on this paint line from primers to paint & clears (low voc)
Hey jimmo can I just ask…..
Does your work pay for your training and how often do you renew skills. As I’ve been painting for nearly 11 years and never seen a rep. I had to train in e herring, welding and fab before I even got a apprentiship in painting. Once I got in the trade off my own back I studied, panel, valeting and for next year detailing with auto glum course first. I only got taught how to hold a primer gun as the other painter left and the new didn’t want to teach me at all. So over the years I’ve learnt by doing many mistakeswell I’ve never had to pay personally for any paint manufacturer training. With BASF my jobber would pay i believe. I dont think the shop was ever charged. Our shop is painting 40+ jobs a week so im sure they are gonna try a bit harder to keep us happy vs a small shop. Id contact your jobber about it and also try to find your rep and get them to stop by.
Im not a big fan of cromax pro ive used it for 11 months and there are way too many issues. If u have a large flake good luck getting it to not model and if u dont get it right the first time u have to redo the whole job u cant spot in the place that messed up it halos really easy and have to work the product a lot and to me it makes me want to go back to solvent and also color match isnt good its really not user friendly and ive even had dupont reps tell me they dont push it cause they dont like it
Why the switch from Onyx?
I thought you had it dialed in pretty good.
I would like to try Dupont. My buddy sprays it and loves it.I was talking to one of the Fix franchise owners from Calgary recently. He was telling me that several of the owners here are pushing against fix in regards to having to use DuPont. He suggested that they are not required (yet) to switch to DuPont and with some more negotiation may be successful at choosing their product at their discretion.
Back on topic…
I used Cromax about 3 years ago, just as they were transitioning into the low VOC primer/clears. I know some of the products they had issues with were changed. My understanding is that the primers and clears are pretty decent now. As for the base, I never had anywhere near the issues that others have had. Yes, it is different and finicky. Some things can be very difficult (tri-stage blends). Colour matching isn’t the best, but if you are blending your jobs, working with the variants you can be successful. We had 2 tech reps out here and the sales rep (ex-painter) and other jobber staff were phenomenal for supporting their shops with the product.
It would be nice if you could test some out before your training and get your own opinion/questions to discuss in the course.
Good Luck 🙂
Well Jimmo I used it for a year, that was a few years ago so I will tell you everything I can remember.
Not all colors will cover in 1.5 coats unless it is sealed with the appropriate Valueshade color under it. There was no valueshade primer that was worth a shit so I had to seal everything. This was not so much of a deal to me as I don’t mind sealing jobs.
Depending on climate conditions I went from a 1.2 to a 1.4. I had too. If it was a bit more humid out it would run before I got coverage. By going to a 1.2 I was able to keep it from over-wetting as easy. On hot dry days it needed a 1.4 to be able to wet the panel well enough.
I never had issues with motteling or blending for that matter to be honest.
Shelf life of certain toners plain suck. If they get cold (not freezing) they will seed. If they get hot they will seed. I had numerous black toners, 06 I think, get really seedy. I had to trash quite a few zyrillac toners for seeding. I would always strain before putting in my PPS cup. If the base had a harder time going through the strainer I knew my panel was going to be seedy. The machine was in our shop for a year so it wasn’t like the toners sat there too long.
Variants hardly ever matched what I sprayed
Color match sucked for me. Not all colors were bad. Throughout a week I could make most jobs work but it seemed like 1-3 a week would be so bad they were not even tintable. Like white on black. I had a camera also and it didn’t help those colors. Red pearls never seemed to match and seems like when I did find a good variant flake size was wrong.
It was not easily repairable. If you had a minor nib it was ok but it didn’t recoat well. It was a bit gummy to sand, I used the sanding sponges for that.
If I ever put my initial 1.5 coats on and let it dry and had to recoat it, say I discovered it wasn’t covered all the way or it was a three stage job, it would die back the next day. Very badly I might add. Never did find a fix for that. A third coat of clear seemed to help some of the times.
It was slow to dry. After using other systems I am not sure piling all the paint on at once really saves much time to be honest. You can put 3-5 coats on in the same time with other systems. It is nice only walking in the booth once for basecoat though.
Final appearance was decent. It never knocked your socks off but it worked. I used all higher voc clears so I don’t know how their low voc stuff works.
I did not like their flex additive, It was only a retarder which in my opinion is worthless. Almost every other company uses an elastifier now days which is great. In the low voc line it may be different though.
I thought a Devilbiss CVI worked best with their base for me, which is odd because I don’t like that gun for anything else.
Overall it would not be my first or even second choice if I had free reign to choose whatever system I could, but it’s workable. I think there are better systems out there. It could have had some of these issues fixed since I used it also. It has been 3 years or so.
The reason for the switch as Ben was touching on is because we operate as part of the fix auto franchise and they are making everyone switch. Im not to happy about it niether are many others but that would be another topic. :teach
a few guys here have already done the training but every paint line looks good at the training center. I wanted to do my training after we all broke it in but my new rep brushed off the suggestion as if it were my first day holding a paint gun. The reps i’ve met do not come across well at all, but i guess they no longer have an incentive….not like we can switch lines.
I didnt really mind BASF when spraying in my downdraft and tbink dupont will still be a step forward. I’m looking forward to trying new products and sharing info here and in my videos, if its as good as the Dupont reps say it is the cars will pretty much paint themselves :rofl .
The guys that came back from training said its more sensitive to humidity then what were likely used to and maybe the reason for a divide on opinions is climate.Thanks so far guys, definately answered some questions.
“”sharing info here and in my videos, if its as good as the Dupont reps say it is the cars will pretty much paint themselves .””
Paint themselves would be great.Then you could spend more time on your dance moves in the videos :dnc
ryan gave a really good review, reminded me of some things I had forgotten.
The seedieness is something I have seen. That black toner was bad for it, and if I recall, the black toners (05 and 08?) were rather brown looking in the sun (not a true jet black)
De-nibbing the base seemed fine, fully sanding it was not much of an option. I never had an issues with die back (using the 72200 and 72500 clear and occasionally the snap dry). But, out weather is relatively dry and the booth I was using moved a lot of air.
One thing that wasn’t mentioned is cratering. It seemed like every once in a while you would base and clear the job and it would look fine. After baking you would get some small cratering. Maybe too much base (water)?
Ryan’s comment on the flex additive is interesting. I recall that the 72200 and 72500 did not require the flex additive (optional) so they were presumably pre-flexed to some extent. May be a good question to ask about the low VOC clears…
funny thing is, i had a rep come in, rep’d for a store that had both ppg and dupont, but for some reason wanted us to switch to chromamax. which i thought wierd since we are ppg shop, why not just get our ppg bussiness form our current store?..
but have fun jimmo, maybe take all these issue’s with on your training trip, and see how they react.i would personally try to screw it up why your there. no matter what, paint always works better with the reps around then when your on your own, even at the training center where they haven’t changed their floor filters for a yr. have fun screwing wtih them.In my area there have been more dupont delams than any other company,I don’t know of one shop in my area that uses it anymore :unsure:
i really want to see what the carlyle group is goin to do with the dupont paint department cause ive heard they cut 1500 jobs and are goin to cut more first of the year and also wondering what they will call it cause they didnt buy the dupont name and will they reformulate the water base or try to make it work and then sell it off to the other big time paint companies to get there money back cause thats what i think a lot of painters would like is to get rid of dupont water just my 2 cents
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