Repair Techniques Explored
How to pick the right masking tape because clean edges, bleed-through and adhesive transfer are all critical details that can make or break a collision paint job.
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Masking tape has been around a long time — 100 years, to be exact. It’s often overlooked by the average consumer, but body shop owners and technicians understand and appreciate what a good masking tape can do. Clean edges, bleed-through and adhesive transfer are all critical details that can make or break a paint job. That’s why the choice of a masking tape is a decision to consider carefully.
It was in 1925 that a 3M engineer invented adhesive masking tape after he saw the difficulty technicians had creating two-tone paint jobs. With so many options available today in the collision repair market — and with a relentless focus on productivity, efficiency and quality repairs — selecting the right tape for the right job is more important than ever. Let’s talk about where to start.
Like any tool, masking tape should be selected to match the job at hand. Key considerations may include:
- How long will the tape stay on the vehicle after it’s painted? Do you run a high-throughput shop where tape is removed soon after the vehicle is repaired? Or do you spend your time on high-end, bespoke jobs where the tape stays on the vehicle longer and needs to remove cleanly after a day or more?
- What temperatures do you work in? Is there humidity? Will a work in progress ever be left outdoors?
- Are you working with simple, straight lines or conforming to three-dimensional curves? Are you masking large, simple areas? Or are you completing fine line work like a custom flame job?
- What kind of paint are you using, and what is its viscosity and chemical composition? What kind of surface are you painting? Does the job include areas like greasy wheel wells?
- Above all, you may consider what impact your tape choice has on efficiency in your shop and any potential for rework
That’s where science comes in. Masking tape has come a long way over the last 100 years, and today it’s more than just a piece of paper with glue on it. In the development of masking products, 3M uses complex proprietary specifications and processes — many of them patented — for the paper, the adhesives and other components.
For example, the paper itself is engineered to specific tolerances for its ability to stretch or curve along with a work surface. The subtle texture of a masking tape, which professionals call creping, permits flexing and stretching. Creping needs to be robust enough to let the tape follow body contours, but thin enough to preserve a sharp edge for a clean paint line.
A saturant solution fills the tape’s pores, not only to make it more resistant to water and solvents, but also to make it more structurally resistant to tearing and slivering upon removal. Barrier coats amplify the tape’s waterproofness. Even the cutting angle that creates the tape edge is calculated for the sharpest possible line.
Then there’s the adhesive, which is a science all on its own. For each planned use, the adhesive needs to be strong enough to keep the paint where the tech wants it and nowhere else — but forgiving enough to release properly when the job is complete. That means finding a sweet spot where the strength of the adhesive and the strength of the paper work together as intended.
A Focus on Cost
The cost of a roll of tape is small in comparison to the job’s overall cost. However, selecting the wrong type of tape can put your repair and your bottom line at risk. The most costly outcome is the most dramatic — having to redo a job. Rework slows down throughput and productivity, as it delays your repair and inhibits new work from entering the booth. The wrong tape can create lost time and money which, in turn, affects more than one invoice.
Other masking missteps can affect your profitability in less obvious ways. Adhesive transfer can occur when the tape is not removed cleanly. To navigate around this, a tech may choose to heat up the booth to aid in its clean removal. This process costs a technician’s time, makes the shop spend more on energy for the heat, and limits turnover by blocking another car from entering the booth. Even earlier in the process, a tape that doesn’t adhere firmly to complex surfaces might require the tech to spend extra time rubbing it down or adding additional tape. A tape built on “board-like” paper that lifts off curves instead of following them can be the cause that subsequently leads to increased labor time and ancillary costs.
Where Innovation Meets Experience
The expertise of auto body paint technicians is just as important as the care and science manufacturers put into the development of masking tape. The people who use the products are experts in their field just like the manufacturers are, and the best results happen when the two come together.
Techs know their work. They know the nuances of their shops, such as the temperature, the environment and the procedures. There are tapes that answer a variety of needs, and techs know which choices feel right in their hands each time they take on a job. Their judgment is trusted, and it’s amazing how much the manufacturers and users learn from one another.
Hidden Factors
Most paint techs know “dry” isn’t what car enthusiasts think it is. A car can be out of the booth as long as 30 days before its surface is fully cured. That makes the adhesive release of masking tape even more mission-critical. I’ve seen times when tape has pulled paint off a vehicle — and messing up a paint job is a costly exercise to restore. Even if you go back and make it look good, that means adding more paint. That adds cost to the shop and adds weight to the car. All of these factors make it critical to choose the right tape so the job comes out right the first time, every time.
In the 100 years since masking tape was invented, it has come a long way from simple glue on paper. There’s a lot of science that goes into developing tape that can perform in a shop environment and withstand various working conditions and temperatures. Disregarding important considerations when selecting masking tape for your shop may result in poor quality repairs and potential rework. With the advancement of innovation within masking tapes over the last 100 years, today’s body shop techs have options available to them that can lead to superior results both on the vehicle and the shop’s bottom line.
Article Credit to BodyShop Business.
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