Scratches/dings/dents

[drewl]

So I never really cared about the appearance of my pedals but after taking the time to paint my
builds fancy colors and designs it's bugging me when they get scratched or paint chips from normal abuse!
So what do you guys do, shoot them with a dozen coats of clear?
treat them delicately?
Wrap them in foam?
I thought the few coats of clear laquer would have protected the paint but nope.
I suppose I could velcro them to keep them from slamming into each other.

[frequencycentral]

I have the same problem with a box I sprayed with car spray paint. Made it a few months ago, now it looks nicely relic!

I think you have to bake it to get it really hard. I cant be bothered with that, so my boxes are all just bare metal now, apart from the photopaper graphic, which I clearcoat.

Check out Beavis Box in a Day:

http://www.beavisaudio.com/techpages/boxinaday.html

[John Lyons]

Just for the record.
Baking doesn't make the paint any more durable, it just speeds the curing
time through heat (absence of humidity and boiling off the solvents [not literally]).

Clear coating can help a little and so can a good primer. Self etching primer on aluminum helps a lot for me.
I use Duplicolor (light green color) but any self etching primer should work.
I painted straight on a bare box the other day just to see what the non primered box did and it chipped a lot more while drilling.
I usually paint then drill (with no chips).

john

[m-theory]

I use actual acid etch, but the spray bomb etch primer does seem to work pretty well, and is much easier to work with.  Paint doesn't really like aluminum very much, so you've gotta get something on it that will stick.  The best efforts, however, won't eliminate all scratches and dings.  It happens.  Probably the best protection, after you've properly finished and clearcoated, is to mount them onto a board where they'll stay put. 

[hday]

Just for the record.
Baking doesn't make the paint any more durable, it just speeds the curing
time through heat (absence of humidity and boiling off the solvents [not literally]).

And the smell. Baking enclosures makes that spray paint smell nearly non existent.

Another thing I find helpful (but kind of irrelevant to the topic) is flattening the enclosure before painting so that sanding is easier and so glossy reflections look better. I put the enclosure face down on the smooth concrete in my garage and hit a block of wood on the inside wall of the enclosure with a hammer. Smaller, deeper dents can take light hit from just the hammer to flatten them out. Then I sand the face with a sanding block to look for spots I missed.