Vent: seeing a lot of shops skip the final tack cloth wipe before primer

I've been in three different shops around Cleveland this month, and each time I saw a painter skip the tack cloth step right before spraying primer. They just blew the panel off with air and went for it. I know it seems small, but I've had two jobs come back in the last year with fisheyes that traced right back to dust the air gun just moved around. My rule is to always do a final wipe with a fresh tack rag, even on a clean panel. It adds maybe 30 seconds. Has anyone else made this a hard rule in their prep process?

4 comments

4 Comments

ryan_black2mo ago

My buddy's shop in Akron had the same issue last spring.

ross.christopher2mo ago

Man, I read a whole article about that. It was talking about how the humidity messes with electrical connections and makes computers throw weird codes. They said a lot of shops in the midwest end up chasing ghosts on simple jobs because of the moisture in the air. It can even make new parts act up right out of the box. That spring weather is no joke for diagnostics.

ryan79324d ago

Actually it's not the humidity itself that causes the main problem. The article probably meant condensation. When warm, moist air hits a cold circuit board or connector, the water drops out of the air and sits on the metal. That's what causes the shorts and weird codes. The humidity reading matters, but the big issue is the temperature change that makes the water appear.

jake_patel2mo ago

Yeah, that spring humidity messes with a lot of shops around here.

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