For those who don't accept this at face value, Haydell said he is happy to supply numerous letters documenting the results by companies that have put the equipment through its paces, ranging from an independent study commissioned by Mercedes Benz to letters from numerous owners of large collision repair shops.

Haydell, president of Haydell Industries, said he has a variety of equipment distribution experience beginning as a Bear Equipment distributor in the mid-1980s, then becoming one of the original Blowtherm paint booth distributors, and leading up to his being named the Blowtherm importer for North America in 2006.

Haydell said that when he was a regional Blowtherm distributor serving Louisiana and southern and central Mississippi, the limited territory led him to move beyond just automotive collision repair facilities to become involved with a variety of industries, including industrial, aviation, and marine painting operations.  That led to an interest in equipment not necessarily associated with the automotive repair industry.

Haydell said he sent Oriano Petrucci to Automechanika in 2005 to look for new technologies that would enhance sales of spray booths; one of the items Petrucci was introduced to was Eurosider's Nitrotherm Spray System.

Haydell began to investigate the system's capabilities. "It was very new to the market, and they were telling us that it could do three things: reduce overspray, increase transfer efficiency, and decrease drying times," he said.  "When Oriano came back from the show, we talked about it and decided that if it could do those three things, it was marketable."

When the first two machines arrived in late 2005, Haydell said he began tests at several locations, including the test facilities at two international paint manufacturers, a body shop, a guitar manufacturer, and a woodworking shop that creates interiors for business jets.  As he overcame translation challenges (Italian to English) and learned a good deal more than he had ever expected about the science of paint transfer, he said it became clear that they were on to something. 

 
For instance, he said the woodworking shop was able to change what had been a 16-step finishing process to just three steps using the machine.

The key, Haydell said, is that the machine allows the shop to control three things it had never controlled before: the static charge, the spray temperature, and the moisture level.  With that control, he said the refinish process becomes much more efficient and consistent.

Haydell said that the air we breathe is 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, and 1 percent trace gases.  The Nitrotherm machine converts the compressed air to 99.5 percent pure nitrogen. He said the shop is able to control the moisture because nitrogen is anhydrous, meaning without moisture.

 
"The first problem with moisture is that it is a natural catalyst. Also, if there is too much of it, it reacts with the solvent and starts to blister or bubble," Haydell said.  "The first thing that generally gets checked when a shop is having paint problems is the moisture content and quality of its compressed air.

"Humidity, oxygen, and heat are Mother Nature's natural catalysts," Haydell said.  "Controlling them is critical to controlling the outcome when you are painting.

"In areas where you have 20-, 30-, or 40-degree changes in temperature during a day, a painter is constantly pulling his hair out because if he mixes a color in the morning and sprays it in the morning and again in the afternoon, he will end up with two colors that do not match because the density of the compressed air has changed.

"The quality of the compressed air is a result of what Mother Nature gives you in temperature and moisture, and the distance and placement of the airlines in the facility," he said.  "With nitrogen, it is constant.  Now you can truly standardize your operating procedures." 

The Nitrotherm Spray System allows the operator to control the temperature of the nitrogen from 80 degrees to 176 degrees, Haydell said, which allows the painter to increase the viscosity of the product without adding reducers. This is an advantage because the resulting paint coating has increased mill build with less shrinkage, he said.

He said the other way that painters sometimes try to overcome viscosity is by increasing air pressure.  "If you use a higher pressure to break up the viscosity, you create more overspray and bounce back, which leads to wasted material," he said. 

 
"Because this equipment allows you to change the viscosity with heat, you can reduce the pressure on the gun and improve transfer efficiency," Haydell said, adding that while many painters traditionally set their guns at 29 psi, painters using the Nitrotherm system typically use settings of 22 to 24 psi.

The Nitrotherm system also seeks to use the fact that two oppositely charged objects are attracted to each other to the painter's advantage.  "The biggest problem with using compressed air as a fluid carrier is that the compression process causes friction, which results in static electricity, which is increased during the transfer process, and is further increased as it moves through the gun," Haydell said.  That process gives the compressed air, and the material it is carrying, a negative static charge, he said.

In addition, he said, the sanding and tacking create a negative charge in the vehicle (as will the battery ground cable, if connected).

"The compressed air is negatively charged, as is the vehicle surface, so they are pushing away from each other," Haydell said.  "The only reason the paint sticks to the surface under the current conditions is that it's wet."

The Nitrotherm system uses ionization to create a positive charge in the nitrogen being sprayed, so the material is now attracted to the object being painted, which is negatively charged.  That results in less overspray and bounce-back, he said, and improves transfer efficiency.

The quality of the paint job is also affected by the static electricity, Haydell said.  "When you have a positive charge on your materials, they tend to want to pull down, so they lay down more uniformly and flatter," he said.  "The result is more definition of image -- it is brighter and the metallics are more reflective."

Reducing the amount of static electricity also has the benefit of reducing the amount of dirt and other contaminants that are drawn into the paint from the surrounding area, Haydell said, which cuts down on polishing.

Because the Nitrotherm system allows basecoat to be applied with fewer reducers, Haydell said painters can apply it "wet on wet," without having to worry about runs or sags.  In addition, he said more color is transferred, so he estimates that 85 percent of colors will cover with just two coats.  "Because you can remove 50 percent of the solvent, with two coats you will have applied the same amount of solvent you would traditionally apply with the first coat," he said.  "More color can be applied before you reach a breaking point."

Haydell said that provides several benefits.  First, the painter can apply both coats before moving to a new area and doesn't have to leave the spray booth and return, saving time and eliminating outside contamination.

"Everywhere we've put the machine, it has delivered a four-to-one return on investment, and most are getting 10-to-one," Haydell said of the equipment which leases for $995 for a single spray booth and increases by several hundred dollars for each additional booth. 

"An average ticket in a body shop is between $2,000 and $2,500 with 40 percent gross profit," he said.  "They will need to paint two more cars a month to pay for the Nitrotherm spray system.  If they do one additional car a week, they have a four-to-one return on the investment, and if they do two it's an eight-to-one return."

Haydell said that with the experience his company is gaining with this technology, it is  discovering added benefits for its customers. Especially in OEM-type operations, he said, he sees that by combining the technology of the Nitrotherm spray with new processes and procedures and painting technique, he can help shops realize even more productivity gains. 

 
In one OEM operation, the shop has seen its savings double with added process changes, Haydell said.  The company is offering a consulting service available to customers who want to realize maximum productivity gain, he said.