3M's Karla Anderson demonstrates application of 3M's Smooth Transition Tape, a new painting solution that helps eliminate hard paint lines from doors, fenders and quarter panel jambs, and cut down on extra work associated with the refinish process.

Video Transcription

Search-autoparts.com I am Karla Anderson. I am with 3m Company and we here today to demonstrate our new product that we are really excited about it. It is 3m smooth transition tape. It is design to help painters eliminate all the time consuming re-work that they have to go through after they paint the job. The product in particular will eliminate hard paint line in the jam and it will give you a nice smooth paint transition. So you do not have to go back and touch up or buff a hard paint line and it will eliminate the sealer creep that you get when the sealer sinks deeper into the jam. The product was developed with a thick adhesive ridge down the center of the tape. And the edges of the tapes are adhesive free. And what that does is it will allow the paint to fader underneath the edges of the tape giving you that smooth transition. The way the product works is you will take a strip of tape and put one edge on the leading edge of your jam and you will leave a little pale hanging out. That is because when the jam is close, you do not want to go back in and pull that tape out as the door is close. A lot of painters will do several tricks that they are trying to get a nice smooth paint transition now. Many of them use pull the tape and I will compare this side by see so you can see the difference that you get. Now in here, you are going to steel obviously back mask your jam to eliminate overspray in the jam. And here you would use our soft edge foam tape or for purposes of this demo, I will just put down tape and paper. Our best recommendation is again, putting down the two strips, you will start your job by spraying sealer, and you will let that flash off. And there is a couple of advantages that this is going to provide the painter. The first is once the sealer flashes. You will come back in as the jam is close and pull the first strip out of there. And as I can pull the tape, you will notice as I am pulling, it is lifting up the wing of the second strip of tape. That is important because you do not want your color to fader underneath there. So I will go ahead and pull this off and then the painters going to come back. It is going to complete the job by spraying his base coat. Again, I have just got color hairspray, but you will let this dry and you will see when I damask the job, there are two advantages. This is going to offer the painter. One is, he is going to be able to control where in the paint line—where in the jam the paint line will go. And the second thing still have a nice smooth paint transition and it will be a wondering paint edge. You will see here. This is a perfect example of sealer creep. You see this white edge. This is where the sealer sinking deeper into the jam when he is using the folded tape. The other thing is you can see it is kind of wondering a bit. So he is not able to control where the paint transition is in the jam with the smooth transition tape side, the base coat has completely covered the sealer and there is a nice smooth transition that you are not going to have to go back with rubbing component or rage and breakdown that rubbing compound. The need thing about this products since launching it, painters have taught us that there is also some other areas that you could this. You could put this product on a body panel, on a bodyline. If you want to transition the coatings and just do a partial panel blend I have also seen painters used it to transition coatings between stone chip coatings and Orem furniture. So you can see it jams as well as bodylines.