In automotive refinish applications, cellulose esters:
- Improve atomization for uniform color consistency
- Reduce surface defects and provide a smoother, more uniform paint film for first-pass yield
- Provide ideal rheology, improving both application and appearance
- Promote faster dry-to-touch time, enabling faster jobs
Cellulose esters provide the ideal rheology to ensure that coating material flows evenly to provide a uniform finish and defect-free coating. Using Eastman cellulose esters greatly reduces sagging, pitting, picture framing, orange peeling, fish-eyeing, floating, flooding, crawling, and telegraphing—all problems that plague paint shops.
CAB-381-0.5 is recommended for accelerating the dry-to-touch time of refinish clear coats. Its high Tg (glass transition temperature) not only ensures faster dry-to-touch times but also impacts desired hardness, which enables early buffing and polishing of the repaired parts. The net result is faster turnaround, which translates to increased productivity. Also, its Newtonian flow characteristics improve appearance, while its clarity and UV stability ensure coatings do not yellow. CAB-381-0.5 can also be used in base coats when metallic flake control and fast dry-to-touch times are desired.
Eastman CAB-321-0.1 is recommended for automotive refinish base coats to produce excellent metallic flake alignment. Due to the low butyryl content it is a good choice for the base coat because the low-butyryl content is less soluble in the solvents used to carry the topcoats and is therefore less likely to be redissolved when the topcoat is applied.
Solus™ 2100 and 2300 performance additives were designed for high-solids solventborne systems to help formulators reach new heights of performance and productivity in VOC-compliant automotive refinish coatings. Unlike conventional cellulose esters, a Solus product can be formulated at 60% solids with a low level of solvent. Consequently, higher spray solids can be achieved with Solus. This gives you virtually the same benefits as conventional cellulose esters—metallic flake orientation, faster drying, consistency in color and appearance—but at higher spray solids that enable 2K VOC-compliant and high-solids paint systems to be produced. It should also be noted that Solus products can be blended with conventional cellulose esters to produce optimum performance at the desired solids.