RTI’s Sean Martinez is a guy you want to see early in your process. Working with a jobber, an air audit can very quickly put your finger on sources and solutions for contamination, humidity, and volume. An air audit can be one of the most important diagnostics to save time, trouble, cost and grief later on. We asked Martinez’ manager, Larry Parker, Reading Technologies, Inc. National Sales Manager, Automotive Division to describe RTI’s products and process.

    Says Parker: “We’re dedicated to producing products that fix the body shop’s problems and with waterborne it’s much more a concern because of its sensitivity to contamination and humidity.  Most of the shops I’ve gone into  have been getting away with it with solvent, but they’ll have problems with waterborne unless they fix their air quality.

What would you say the the biggest demand is for product right now?
The biggest demand product right now is our PERF 25 air systems, which is one booth set up or one painter setup. We also have a PERF 50 which is set up for two sprayers or two booths. Waterborne air usage is sometimes three to four times what they used for solvent-based products. We make a manual replacement desiccant (our eliminator product) but with the additional usage, those products are saturated very quickly and need to be maintained two to three times more regularly than they were prior.

Sean Martinez does air audits for RTI, a critical step in identifying potential air quality and supply problems. Martinez lives in Salt Lake City but flies to work with California jobbers and shops every week.

    There’s a history of shops not maintaining their air and that creates problems. You need consistent clean dry air.  What a PERF 50 or PERF 25 does is take all the oil mist out.  We also keep the the humidity at essentially 0% and the units regenerate so you have new fresh desiccant every time.  Desiccant has got a bad rap because the dessicant sometimes breaks down and causes contamination. Some of the units out there do not have post-filtration so they tend to create some contamination.  All of our PERF units have final filtration which eliminates any desiccant breakdown or any contaminants coming from the desiccant bed.
    The pre-filtration is basically for oil vapor droplets and the post-filtration is to stop the desiccant contamination itself. Another thing that’s big now is an active charcoal bed. RTI, since its inception in 1987, has had active charcoal in our first stage elements to remove oil mist from the air lines. Many of the systems out there are now adding those active charcoal beds but as we do air audits we’re finding that those units can deliver contamination from that active charcoal into their paint surfaces. Active charcoal works to absorb oil mist but  it should never be used as a final filter.  
    Probably only 1 in 50 shops have no contamination at all coming through their air lines. A compressor, especially a piston compressor, tends to create contamination. Active carbon does not remove humidity. It only removes oil mist so, for productivity reasons, you’ve got to control the humidity in your air lines.