Common Illusion/Dormant Series Questions and Application Tips

All illusion series should be applied and allowed to flow-out plus 2 minutes in an oven set to 400 degrees F. After flow-out plus 2 minutes, remove the part from the oven and allow to cool. At this point you can check your coating thickness with a mil gauge if you feel the coverage is suspect, you can add more and re-flow. Once the correct thickness is achieved (2-3 mil or .002"-.003" thousands of an inch) allow to cool and reset the oven to 375 degrees F. Apply your Clear Vision top coat. Applying an even coverage of white powder covering all surfaces not allowing areas where the blue base can be seen through. Place back into the oven that has been reset to 375 degrees F. Allow to flow out and at this point you can choose to completely cure or pull after flow-out to inspect clear coverage. If you find the coverage to be thin then apply more at this stage once the part cools. Otherwise completely cure the part. The Clear Vision cure timer of 18 minutes does NOT start until the thickest part of the coated substrate reaches the required 375 degree temperature.

Thank you for your inquiry,With your statement that the color is fine I'm going to assume you have applied a clear coat and cured both coats based on that clear coat's schedule. Also only partially cured the Illusion base coat (flow-out + 2 minutes). You also state that mil thickness is showing plenty. Light spots can come from too thin of an application and often times light application can occur when the part starts to build up a charge. A base coat plus your clear coat should have a minimum of a 4 mil thickness. However, this could mean 1 mil thick on your base and 3 mil on your clear (too thin of a base) or 3 mil base and 1 mil clear (too thin of a clear coat). There needs to enough partially cured base coat to provide enough pigments for the Clear coat to pull and there needs to be enough clear coat that can actually do the work of pulling the purple pigments to the surface. Here is how I will sometimes take care of an illusion base over a complicated part: 45 KV setting is pretty common for us. Fog out of the gun without surging and the BEST ground possible. Apply the base and inspect. If I have continual trouble getting areas to take powder even with KV adjustments, etc. then I will place into the oven for flow-out. I will allow to completely flow-out then inspect. Once cooled I will check mil thickness. I can then attack those light areas again and know that at this level of cure (flow-out) I can re-flow that newly applied touch-up powder into the original application. No reason (except maybe time) that you can't inspect again after another flow out. Perhaps take notes on your mil thickness in various areas so that you can compare them to the finished product once cleared. Eventually the base coat will be cured to the point that additional touch-up will start to feel rough and look like over-spray so use caution and try to complete with your second coating attempt.Flow-out Base Coat plus 2 minutes then pull to cool. Here you will apply your clear and can do the same flow-out check but initially look for a good white powder coverage with no purple or blue base showing through. Place into your readjusted oven (if necessary) and then pull after flow-out (allow to cool) and check mil thickness. Doing this check a few times you will start to get the feel of how these illusions lay down and what the powder should look like prior to curing. This is why Mil Gauge is so important as well as an Infrared Thermometer. We offer these on our website but are available anywhere. We do a nice guarantee on ours and ship right away.