What is considered the break between body tech and paint tech? Where does the body work technically stop and paint take over? We have a body tech who feels that sanding adjacent panels for blend is the painter’s job. I believe the vehicle should be paint-ready minus tape time when it hits paint – primed, finish sanded and ready to shoot. What is the industry norm?
The official break between body tech and paint tech varies. If you go by the book, and by that I mean the major estimating programs like Audatex, CCC, Motor, etc., they have the body work (filler) finished at 150 grit. The painter then takes over from there and primes and blocks it and finishes the painting process. That being said, every shop is different depending on how it’s set up.
Some shops have combination men only where they do a job from start to finish – all the body and paint work. This is usually done in the old-time shops that pay on a commission basis. Then there are the hourly shops that break down their processes like an assembly line where they have a frame man doing big hits, a guy that does mild hits, and body men doing all the tiny dents and filler work. Then, they turn it over to the paint area, where painters’ helpers jamb out the parts and sand, mask and do prep work for the main painter or painters. The main painter does all the spraying, blending and color matching. They might have another station where a team unmasks the car after buffing it out, then the vehicle moves onto washing and detailing.
This is a short but I believe accurate description of how there are many different ways shop owners run their shops. Some are hourly and some are commission, no matter the configuration.
I would go to the P-pages of the major auto crash estimating guides and look under ‘paint.’ You can Google ‘P-pages’ and come up with most of the paint procedures for all of them. I hope this helps!
