William Ford
i’ve ignored graphene coatings for long enough, it’s time to test them out and see what all this hype is about, If you’re in the detailing community and have social media, you probably have come across a post or two about the new graphene based protective coatings and there seems to be a lot of different opinions being thrown around on the internet.
So i want to test the products for myself and see what it’s all about: we’re going to test out graphene coating and i’m going to put it versus the ceramic coating that we currently use, which is crystal serum light. I’M putting it together with crystal serum light because i feel like this is an entry level. Coating ethos just came out with a pro level graphene coating, so i don’t want to compare it to a pro level coating like crystal serum ultra, i’m going to compare it to csl, i’m going to compare the price, the application, the durability of this.
I don’t know much about graphene coating, so i want to learn as much as i can and i’m going to share that with you guys so we’re going to learn together, i’m going to go through this whole process. We’Re going to use this hood here we’re going to do a side by side test. I always want to be testing the newest, the latest, the greatest whatever it is because i want to be providing my customers with the best possible solution. So if this graphene coating does better than a csl well then it’s something to consider for chicago, auto pros to change using that coating. Now we want to offer so these these two coatings here crystal serum light by g-technic, is a three to five year coating.
It is a ceramic coating and then we have the graphene coating, which is a five-year coating by ethos all right before we apply the actual coatings on this hood. Here, i’m going to do a couple different parts to this, so i want to actually do the application. The test of it, the price, we’ll compare all that stuff between the ceramic and the graphene here and then we’ll do a durability test. We’Ll do some tests with the hood we’ll let this cure for two weeks and go through that, but another part of it is. I really want to learn about, and i haven’t been interested in the chemistry of products that much if it works it works.
So that’s all i really care about and that’s what we’re gon na do in part a of this test, but part b. Is i really kind of want to see what’s in this, what makes it graphing or what makes a ceramic coating better and what are the properties in them and what are the differences, and why would you choose a ceramic coating over a graphene coding real quickly? This is a article about graphene coatings versus ceramic coatings, but this system just came out from rupez and i’m really excited to use it. This hood here we actually have to polish it and make it look good before we put the coatings on and that’s what we’re going to use here da course da fine, there’s three different pads that they have with this system. Here i’m excited to try it out and see how it works, because there’s been a lot of talk about this and i’m excited to get it in my hands and use it.
So let’s do that. This is the the course pad. So this is the what you’re going to use with the cutting compound here. So this would be your first step to cut if you’ve got big defects like we got in this hood, we got a lot of sanding marks and swirls and scratches. This is our test.
Hood, so this is our first step all right. I think i used too much, it’s weird! It’S bringing back some memories. If anybody’s ever used. Mcguire’S d300 correction compound – it smells exactly like that.
Ah, but it works fantastic holy crap. There was a whole set section here: it was all wet sanding and that was the first pass over it and it’s unbelievable. I’M impressed i’m super impressed compounds and pads are designed for dual action. Polishers the cut and finish on this system is very, very impressive. I’M gon na leave the links down below where you guys can find these products and put them to your own test, all right, we’re ready to apply both of our coatings before we do that.
We got to make sure that the surface is clear of all the polishing oils and residue, and for that we’re going to use meguiar’s surface prep all right. Let’S take a few gloss readings on each side. It’S going to go right down the middle here. So we’ll go around the set of tapes, we’ll go at the 60 degree angle: 99.1.
101.2. 101.1. 101.
. 101. 2 on this side, 101.2, 101.4, 101.
. 101.5. So we’ll do the ethos. Graphene coating first we’re going to do that on my right side, your guys left and then we’ll do the crystal serum light over here.
The ethos graphene matrix coating that we’re using here is a 30 ml bottle and it cost 99. Application is really simple start by shaking the bottle and apply the coating to a microfiber sponge and spread evenly on the panel you’re gon na see this coating start to rainbow and after one to three minutes, it’s going to start to haze and then it’s ready to Be wiped off the panel with a brand new microfiber towel make sure that you’re using light pressure and removing all the residue see the darkness of the coating. I dump some in there, so you can kind of see what it looks like we’re supposed to do. Two applications of the graphene, so let’s do that. The second application of the graphene coating can be done right away.
There is no waiting time all right, we’ll move on to the crystal serum light. I got two separate towels on here, so i don’t cross contaminate. Any of the product and we’re gon na apply this with the dropper. That’S supplied in here. I’M gon na shake it too shut the graphic and i’m gon na take this one.
This is how we normally this uh. This applicator was supplied with the graphing. That’S why i use that applicator. These are the thin savers. I love these.
We have them here at car supplies warehouse, but normally i use a suede and a block here with the crystal serum light. So that’s what i’m gon na do: [ Applause ], the g-technic crystal serum light – is also a 30 ml bottle and costs 69. 99, so right away on the graphene side, you could tell it it went to a rainbow effect and you could barely even tell the coating was there. I can’t even see that, but here you can see it’s almost hazing. You can see this coating hazing and you can really tell it’s.
There. We’Ve been using this coating for a long time. I know it’s super easy. We let it sit there again, it’s the same thing as the graphing side, one to two minutes, and then you can wipe this off. You only need one layer of the crystal serum light if you wanted to top it.
If you want to put a second layer on it, you can put the exo version four right over it. That’S what you usually do for more hydrophobic, but we’re just going to test straight coating to straight coating, recommends doing two coats crystal ceremony: light one coat, right away just with the toweling um. The crystal serum light side feels a little bit uh slicker. I’Ve always loved using crystal serum light, because it’s just that’s how easy it is so easy to take off i’m gon na. Let it sit right here for 24 hours before i use the gloss meter on it, but in 24 hours we’ll come back tomorrow.
I’Ll use the gloss meter and then i’m going to let this fully cure for for a week and a half two weeks, it’s five days for the graphene, and i think it’s almost a full two weeks for the crystal serum light to fully fully cure. After 24 hours, both these coatings can get wet, but you want to wait that full week before you wash them with any chemicals or anything like that, so uh we’re gon na.
Let this sit for a while we’ll measure the gloss and then we’ll put it outside for a couple weeks, we’ll let it hit with the elements and then we’ll give it everything. We’Ve got we’ll test these coatings out all right, so tim just messaged me because i did a little instagram teaser on the graphene versus ceramic. It doesn’t look like he’s too happy about me doing the article on it.
So, let’s uh, let’s call them and find out. What’S going on huh, this is tim tam. What’S up man, it’s jason chicago pros, hey jason, how you doing good? How are you doing man doing good? It’S been a while man.
It’S been too long brother since we’ve seen each other yeah yeah how’s everything going good man good, can’t complain. Your business is uh busy here with the rap stuff, and you know, ethos has been taken off like crazy, so can’t complain at all man. How about you? That’S awesome, congratulations same thing: man yeah, it’s just staying busy thanks for calling me too. I definitely i just wanted to talk it’s kind of hard to talk over text and kind of convey what what’s going on yeah but yeah.
No, there’s! No! No issues at all with you doing testing what we’re basically finding with graphene is. It seems to be so polarizing that people are kind of jumping at any opportunity to attack it yeah. You know many.
Many of these big brands even are coming out now kind of just saying that it’s pseudoscience and kind of scammy and all that stuff uh. So it’s just in any any opportunity for like a comparison, article that kind of thing just opens up the potential for so much drama, which obviously is not kind of not the direction. At least when i wanted to start this business, i was trying to kind of get out of that whole coding, ppf drama industry and it’s kind of funny that it’s all come full circle again so yeah. Well, i think. As far as drama goes, i mean you either pull yourself in it or you stay out of it.
I mean your. Your coating is going to be compared to other ceramic coatings and i think ceramic coatings got the same kind of uh wrath in the beginning, yeah. So the article i want to do i mean obviously i want to compare it to ceramic coatings. Everybody else is going to be comparing it to ceramic coatings. This is my first experience with uh graphene coating, so i actually want to learn as much as i can for me.
If you could tell me about it, because i’ve seen some of the same things on on facebook and everything in these groups and um, and i think a lot of people have misinformation on on on a lot of products. How can i help you with information to better educate your your consumer base? I mean, is there questions you have in regards to the coding in regards to the you know, manufacturing of it is yeah i’d love to kind of arm you with information and then kind of be the you know, discerning. You know truth and the knowledge behind kind of what some of the claims are out there and then having some.
You know some science behind what is and what isn’t, because absolutely yeah um one thing i do see on your website that maybe is misleading and i don’t particularly like is a revolution in nanotechnology.
Graphene is one atom thick and twice as strong as kevlar. Obviously graphene may be twice as strong as kevlar and, if you’re writing that, obviously it is, but it almost sounds like the emmy kevlar. Everybody knows that as bulletproof vest exactly and and that might be taken the wrong way. We’Ve gotten some comments about that too. It’S probably one of the talking points, we’ll refine it and tweak a bit, because i mean the basically the goal.
You know it’s, and this is just kind of a you know. Technical marketing standpoint of of you know being in a position that the brand currently is as we’re retail facing brand now kind of now. You know more tailored towards also the prosumer and even the professional, with with the crafty matrix pro and the goal. With that. That statement was basically to educate people on graphene itself, because the average consumer – you know you talk to nine people out of ten.
Maybe you know one or two people were gon na know what graphene is and be able to relate to something that is relatable so yeah. The goal of that statement wasn’t to say our coding is bulletproof. It’S gon na be twice as strong, as you know, kevlar and steel and all the stuff. That’S basically saying hey graphene is this this real thing that’s been out there. It has these properties um.
This is kind of. This is why we incorporate it into a coding, or this is you know, kind of the comparison. So we tried to take something that is unknown and related to something that is known and that was kind of the best way to to do it. But i definitely understand how that could be. You misinterpreted as us saying the coding is bulletproof and you know that’s that’s.
The last thing i want is people to get false expectations with the coding. Yes to build up like this crazy. You know scratch. That’S why we’re not marketing anything as like you know, self-healing or scratch resistance or or anything like that, and i haven’t been taking down some talking points or a marketing team has, you know, always kind of been more on the aggressive side and that i don’t want To give any type of false representation of the coding, because yeah it’s just not going to it’s, just not going to be good in the end, so yeah, that’s, definitely something. I think we could refine a little bit further to be a little more clear.
So i’d agree with you. If you wouldn’t mind, i would love to hear a little bit more on the chemistry side of graphene and and how it’s how it works together and everything yeah totally. So it’s a reduced graphene oxide, so very similar to as let’s look at the oxide, it’s a metal oxide of graphene. You know it’s a way to basically take a solid and immerse it in this person to a liquid solvency um. Obviously, you can’t take graphene and layer it onto a vehicle finish or surface.
There has to be kind of a body mechanism very much as ceramic coatings. You can’t take a silica or a glass or quartz and bond it to a surface without heat, without basically physically melting, the glass and doing so so we use a very similar type, bonding method to actually get the graphene onto the membrane itself. So it’s you know based around a ceramic chemistry, but it is a graphene um, reduced graphene oxide chemistry itself. So you get, you know, kind of the glue structure of sticking the graphene onto the finish. But the top surface you are getting is a reduced graphene oxide.
So it’s a metal oxide of graphene okay, so instead of the sio2 it has this graphing product is there any type of sio2 in it? There is a carrier system that is very similar to sal2, so that is actually kind of the glue we’re using to bond it to the surface okay. So it’s kind of that’s very similar. It’S not it’s, not a polycylosine sa2. In that sense, it’s like it’s a kind of more of the similar carrier system itself.
It’S the same mechanism, a very similar mechanism that we use to basically bond ceramics to the finish to the surface. So it’s taken taken off. You know basically oxidizing the silica or in this case the graphene itself and be able to bond that to the surface through the carrier system, so it is and that’s kind of where it is a little mis. You know a little confusing people are trying to understand. You know if it’s graphene it has to be.
You know one atom thick. It has to be kind of these properties and the reduced graphene oxide is it’s just not a perfect one, atom thick lattice so and that’s kind of where the science we’re still not quite sure exactly how it is working um. Our best understanding so far is that it’s basically layering. It is a one atom, thick structure itself, but it’s not a perfect grid, but it is a layering that kind of like uh kind of like a sandwich you’re getting all these layers of graphene and not just a one atom thick. You know matrix across the entire vehicle that’s perfectly situated, and that was kind of the one of the things with graphing itself.
It is very expensive to manufacture just because to get that absolutely perfect. You know for for conductivity reasons is one of the main benefits of graphene. You have to have that perfect structure. There can’t be any misalignment to the molecules it has to be one out of thick. There can’t be any breakages, otherwise it wouldn’t be conductive uh, whereas with the reduced grafting oxide.
It still has that, like i said it’s kind of just waffles and chunks that were that are being laid on top of each other, because even in our wash testing we’re seeing something that’s kind of really interesting. And can we take all our testing through astm certified abrasion testing, uh water contact angle, quv, accelerated weather testing, we’re seeing through our scrub testing we’ll take this all the way to about 8 000 simulator washes okay, our water contact angle, normal ceramic kind of abrades and Starts to lower its contact angle over time, so after a thousand washes, it starts out 100 degrees and it drops down to 95 degrees, for example.
Okay, what graphene is doing is kind of abrading away in stages, so it’ll lose a couple degrees in the first thousand or two thousand washes and then for the next. Five thousand washes that maintains that that water contact angle, then, after x amount of time passes. It drops down to the next tier, so that’s kind of what we’re seeing we’re thinking.
It is kind of that layering effect of the actual graphene, so as one layer is basically penetrated or abraded away, it starts reacting to the next layer. That’S kind of why we’re seeing this irregular drop off from the water contact angle through abrasion over time. So that’s awesome. It’S pretty interesting! I would love to have access those testings.
I mean like you got to send this off to do it in like labs. Don’T you yep yeah, that’s all third party, and it’s just basically. Our partnership with our chemical manufacturer has a really good relationship with a third-party tester. So we send them all off. You know we have basically a lab sample.
You know it’s kind of, and that’s kind of where the detail in chemistry is it’s. You know, there’s a lot of science to it, but there’s also a lot of trying things and then testing them. That’S really the way we make products is, you know we have a hunch, we figure out how to kind of make things work and we obviously work with raw material suppliers that provide us with many of the raws. We kind of give them an idea of what we’re looking for and then we basically make a product, send it off to third party test and then go hey. This is this.
Is our findings and we tweak something send it back. We realize it’s better or worse and kind of refine things that way so yeah we have access all to that third party testing we’re kind of working, we’re working on that on the back end now to to get that that out in the public without um making It so hard to understand kind of what it’s saying and what it means yeah, because there is definitely a lot of you know. Kind of you can take that information the wrong way too, because companies use different metrics to test their products like we use a five percent don solution.
Some companies use the one percent and that’s kind of that’s you know in between. If we say it’s, 5 000 scrubs and a company may come out saying it’s 10 000 and that’s kind of when you get in this pissing match of night age, 10h, 5 year 10-year kind of craziness, that’s going on yeah all right!
Thank you for the call tim. I appreciate it. Man yeah no problem man. I was really talking to you yeah. I said if you have any questions moving forward about the codings or anything else, please feel free to reach out i’m i don’t know, but i you know talk on a on a daily basis with our chemistry team, so i can relay any information that i know And if i don’t, i get you an answer, pretty quickly, yeah cool all right sounds good.
Buddy. All right man talk to you soon talk to you later, bye, all right. It’S been 48 hours and we’re going to check the gloss on each of these uh coatings. Here: graphing side, 100.7, 100.
, 101.1, 101.2, not much of a change there, huh uh-oh! That doesn’t do that. On the graphene side, it won’t even okay, i’ll just hold it 99.
4, six look at this. It won’t even stay 99.1. 98.4.
98.5. Look at that doesn’t do it at all. This side definitely feels much slicker than the graphing side, but it’s only been 48 hours, so we’re gon na. Let them fully cure for the uh.
The week week and a half and then we’ll start doing our tests and determine on which one’s uh more durable in our quest to learn as much as we can about graphene coatings, we’re headed to see jim lefaber, the owner of simon’s shine shop and dr beasley’s, it is now time to deep dive into the chemistry side of graphene and we’re here at dr beasley’s. This is uh the simonstein shop dr beasley’s headquarters, and we’re here with jim and you’ve, been studying, graphing coding for quite a while. Now yeah we’ve been studying for about six years now: wow yeah. How long has graphene been out? It’S been out since 2004.
That’S not a long time. It seems like for like an element out there. No it’s it’s! I mean it’s a wonder material. They discovered this in 2004, like you said and they’ve been.
It has awesome properties, okay, but trying to get that into something now has been difficult, so they’ve been working on things on this and then i started to use about six years ago, because i read about these properties and and it’s pretty amazing stuff that we have Where does graphene come from it’s from graphite, okay, so graphite is a three-dimensional, crystalline three-dimensional crystalline material and what they do is take one molecule of that one atom. Okay, thick from that. So this is the way it was discovered in 2004. Basically, they took scotch tape and they were able these guys in the uk. I think in a university and they took tape off of uh graphite and they were able to pull a molecular level one atom off and they studied the properties of that and they were amazed really yeah, because graph graphite has been around for a long time.
It’S in pencils and this this is comes from graphite there right is there anything, but that’s crystalline. That’S three-dimensional! Okay, seven! This is a two two dimensional lattice and at that one atom. The strength is supposed to be it’s stronger.
They say 200 times steel, but it’s one atom thick. So if i shaved like my pencil up, i mean, am i making photographing or um? I know it’s from depend. I don’t know if that’s a hundred percent but from a graphite block. Okay, you can take a little bit off.
You can take it off with with tape. That’S how it’s first started, but now it’s processed more than that, okay, so they’re able to to to man manufacture in bulk. That was a big thing that they had to do was hey. How do we make this in bulk, and so they probably did that i think back uh, 2015 or 14. They started to make that in bulk.
Okay, now i’m seeing a lot of stuff on social media and facebook and everything people talking about graphing, these graphing codings coming out and i’m seeing kind of some controversy of people saying this is you know they’re using buzzwords and it’s a gimmick and it’s everything else. That’S kind of why i’m doing this article. I really want to discover what it is and kind of the difference between ceramic coating too. So you have graphene. Is that what you put directly into a coating like?
How do you take graphene and make it into a coating where it can protect the car right? Where is the process of that, and where did it come from? That’S the difficulty that we are finding like. I’Ve worked this for the six years and what i see people do now and they are – and i think they’re saying this – they are taking graphene powder that you can buy out there and then they’re put it’s very expensive uh per gram. You buy it in grams.
Um amino binding grams, so you you put it in coatings by gram because you can get a lot in a gram like, for example, you can buy a drum a 55 gallon drum of uh graphene weighs about three pounds: three pounds: a 55 gallon drum weight, three Pounds i mean it’s light and fluffy and it’s a powder and uh yeah and we’ll have some to uh to show you. I think it’s in here, but it’s uh. This is five grams. I believe okay uh in there. So how do you this is.
The difficulty is, how do you get that molecular that one atom thickness um in a hexagon bonded together, so the molecules are bonding together in one level to coat the vehicle yeah? I think people are, you can add it into a solution of ceramic. That’S what they’re doing now they’re taking um graphing powder, putting it in there and infusing it in there and but i don’t think it’s working. I haven’t seen the performance level of a graphene uh infused coating out there outperform average or very good ceramic coatings out there. Okay, i’ve been testing this for years, um, so it.
How do we get that strength, because most ceramic coatings is a three-dimensional structure in the hills and valleys and paint you get the three-dimensional structure, how it fuses onto the paint and it it uh. It creates a nano coating, that’s hydrophobic or hydrophilic, and it uh and the water just rolls off or it sheets off, because it’s fused onto the paint. How do you get one layer to be this top layer? This is it’s going to be strong as steel. How do you get that to sit on top of the car one molecule thick yeah?
I don’t know it’s not it’s. So when we test it, we infuse and we make some different ways of doing it. We’Re testing it yeah. I’M not seeing the longevity that i should get with graphene okay, so i don’t think it’s working. You know those hexagon chicken wires ever seen that yeah the hexagon trigger that’s what this graphene look looks like there’s one molecule connected to three other, but it’s a hexagon.
Okay, that at a microscopic level, but that’s what you want to get to it – is chicken wire the hexagon chicken wire, not the squares, but the hexagon. That’S what it looks like one layer: okay, that’s what you want to get to you want them to all connect. So it’s in a solution like this. How do you know this? The nano technology, how it’s?
How are you going to take those molecular that structure like chicken wire those six connections in how do you get that on top? I want to get that on top of the ceramic coating. How do i get it there for all the protections, because this is the strongest steel right or stronger than steel? How do i get that on top and it’s going to protect it from from everything? Is it stronger than steel at that?
Yes, one atom layer? Yes, so i think of this so like stronger than steel, a steel can stop a bullet. Are you telling me if i get this one layer of graphene coating that it could? This is what we read. Yeah i haven’t seen this, but yeah it can it’s it’s 200.
This is what the stats are. It’S 200 times stronger than steel at that atom layer wow. So it’s super strong. However, the only problem is um. Steel is not flexible.
This is flexible. So it’s a flexible, you know carbon fiber. Have you seen it’s a fiber thing and it’s very strong but lightweight and it’s flexible. Then you can put resin and clear coat on it to make it hard, but if you’ve seen it in this raw form, it’s almost like fabric, but this is. This is what it is.
It’S a flexible thing, but if there’s a kink in there’s a kink or something in graphene, it becomes brittle. So if there’s something that that that does break it or something like that, it falls apart. But how do we get this structure to hold up with our base? Whatever our base is to sit on a car to sit on a car right now, i think if you’re mixing it you’re infusing it. You got some graphene here.
You got some graphene here, but you’re not creating that chicken wire that lattice of one molecule thick of protection. Okay, i think it just sits in one place. It might even sit at the bottom of the bottle. Yeah, you know. Is it all going down the car in a uniform way for protection yeah, because you do have to shake up the coating before you do use this yeah i mean looking at yours right now.
Look at mine. I see it too yeah, even though it’s we try to infuse it. So it’s balanced, it sits in there, but so have you seen other coatings out there? Okay, yes, they all say shake very well because you’re shaking up that, i’m guessing all the stuff is settling at the bottom. It’S probably just mixed in yeah.
So it’s just mixed in it’s infused, it’s sitting at the bottom, so you know you mix this up. Let’S say: you’ve got it uniform in there and then you got to quickly put it. How do you make sure that you’re uniform it’s not happening yeah? I don’t think it’s hot, it’s easier to do with cloth with cloth. I keep thinking you can make that pretty uniform and it’s i mean it’s conductive, so you know it’s everything’s connecting right.
Okay, how do you make sure that’s how you test it? Every great thing to do is if it’s on a car, you test it. You do uh you you, you basically check. Just like you check a fuse okay to see if you’ve got a uniform protection on the car. That’S interesting!
So when a chemical company does that and say hey you can test it yeah by the conductivity of this. Then then, you know you have great protection, otherwise um you’re, buying a dream, you’re buying uh buying this hype yeah and we’re not there yet. But if you get very good ceramic coating, it is outperforming graphene right now, so the coating’s out there right now. Are you saying it’s basically, a ceramic coating with graphene, that’s added to it almost just a graphene powder right when you say infused. How is that i mean?
Is that just a fancy word for just they mix it together, they may mix it there’s other ways you can put it in there in the process of making the coating instead of getting the coating at the end and putting the powder in there’s stages. Before that you, you can infuse it at the most basic. Yes, they get the powder, you can buy it on amazon, you can buy graphene on amazon and you can put it in and mix it, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to have the properties that you want to have the graphene to have so.
There’S there’s graphene and i’ve heard of graphene oxide yeah is that that’s a different form of graphene now there’s all different types of size so, like i have a pow powder here, but there’s different thicknesses different oxides that you can get different forms you can get and That’S what you do you study different forms and you want what’s going to work, to create the protection that you want: okay, um and so there it’s there’s, there’s hundreds of different uh forms of it. So you have some graphene here and you’ve been testing out.
This is graphene infused nano resin right. I just wanted to show uh for you and your uh presentation. What’S it look like so i’ve got. This is a nano resin okay. This is a ceramic coating that i use and sell and it works awesome.
Yeah um. I also infused it and uh. This is in our stage i put put graphene in there. This is something i’ve tested before. So this is a graphene infused, nano resin.
So i take this infuse graphene in there it’s it’s turns dark. It turns black um. One thing great about graphene: it is clear, but when there’s 50 layers, if you have 50 layers, then it starts of 50 atoms thick yeah of of of graphene. Then it does turn dark. That’S one thing great about graphene.
It is transparent and it’s thin as stages. So it’s just in there because you you have that in there, but when you put it on a vehicle, um it’ll go clear unless, unless it’s really thick and then you can change the color of a vehicle, it’ll look different um. So i infused it and i’ve studied these things and i’ve. You know we take, we take it to a lab and they third party test it in ovens and different situations, and with this there’s no performance difference really yeah. If it is it’s minor, okay, my mine are different, is not enough to um warrant the price that i put in graphene in there for how much that costs.
It’S not worth it um, but i’m not seeing the performance change, i’m not going to put something in there. Unless i see a performance change and any the coatings graphene infused and no by no means i’ve. I’Ve seen them all or looked at them all or on everything, but what i’ve seen is. I haven’t seen a performance increase in this i’ve. Seen a five year warranty i’ve seen three-year warranty with graphene.
Why get graphene? If it’s only give give you three to five years of protection, i got ceramic coatings, hot, really good ceramic coatings, that last longer than that yeah and perform better than that. One of the things that i’m seeing um their claims, they’re saying that the graphene coatings uh have a lot less water spotting they’re, not as prone to water spotting versus the sio2 ceramic coatings. Have you done any water tests? I have not.
I haven’t. I don’t get we’re going to do one good good. I my nano resin i haven’t seen. I don’t have too much water uh spotting issues with that and i haven’t tested i’m trying to get longevity. How do i get that lattice that that one molecule that one sheet of graphene?
How do i get that on the surface of a vehicle? Yeah? That’S what i’ve been selling, but i haven’t studied the spotting, but that’s a great thing to test. So, in your opinion, right now is is graphene. It is kind of a buzzword.
What is a buzzword and i’ve taken some products out there and i’ve seen hey what i don’t even know. What’S in there? Is it really working? If i i’m not the smartest guy on the blog, but i want to say some people were studying this stuff, they studied it longer than me. What are they doing and some i do see graphene in there powder in there infused in there and unfortunately in our industry.
I have seen some things where it’s just black dye right and they touted his graphene. They may put a speck in there, but he got black dye in there and you almost can tell by the price that they aren’t uh um. It’S not graphene right. I think this five gram of graphene, i know um, probably uh 25 to 30 bucks. Okay of of my cost in there, okay and then i guess the theory behind it.
You put the graphene in there and it kind of has this matrix. You know that spreads out and and you’re looking for hardness, you’re looking for durability, um and you’re, not seeing that in the in the lab tests, i’m not saying i’m not seeing it anymore, hydrophobic uh, then sometimes even less so um than than other than the same Material um without graphene in it. What are they using graphene for right now? Are they actually making products from graphene? Most of it is conductive, so it’s uh, wiring and wiring and in cloth, and they think they’re.
One of the first things you have is we’re going to start. You know five years from now or 10 years now we’re going to have our clothes that we have, that can be washed and everything else is going to be where our smartphone might be or where electronic device devices are we’re. Gon na be talking like this hello. No pick up, but it’s in the clothes clothing they’ve been successful. In that okay, we shattered all my dreams.
I felt like you know. This was the next big thing. I hope to have that for you um i’m having more success with the nanotechnology and getting it. I want to get the solvents. My goal is to get solvents out of uh coatings have one product now uh nano resin pro that has no solvents in it, so there’s no gassing off, but it’s very expensive right, so i’m trying to get the ingredients down.
So i can have a coating and that’s that you know third-party testing um the warrant. The warranties we put out is 10 to 15 years yeah and that’s very successful. I’Ve i’ve been frustrated with graphene. I haven’t getting the performance that i need, but soon as i was so am i able to get the performance i’ll put some something out right now. I think it’s a lot of hype.
I think i’ve seen do-it-yourselfers buy this product and they think they’re going to get this performance and uh. The failure actually has been um them. Prepping surfaces correctly, okay and it falls apart um, but the same thing would happen with a ceramic tube, but they spent a lot of money on graphene. Think this is the last coating they never ever need to put on their car yeah, but then they they made them out of prep correctly yeah. So graphene is a conductive material.
Yes, is there any fear of putting a graphene-infused coating on a car and the car being conductive, somehow with electricity, or something like that? Are you gon na, like you know how you walk up and you rub on the carpet and you get this little shock cause you’re gon na touch the car. You get shocked, it uh it’s supposed to keep things cooler also. So if you keep, if you can get the temperature of a black car even less on a hot day, if you just bring that temperature down a few degrees, that makes a huge difference on the surface, from drying out from getting beat by the uv rays and Everything else and it would it would protect the have you tested that than the temperature outside. No, i haven’t.
I, i still don’t have confidence that we’ve got one layer uh protecting the car. Once i know of one layer, then i’d love to test the temperature and stuff i’ve tested temperature for years in in getting car carnauba waxes flashes off at a certain temperature. So i’ve tested that to figure out when that is and how hot do cars get out in chicago in the summer, sun, yeah and and it does flash off. But if i’m not getting the longev longevity that i want to get on this, i don’t think i’ve got a layer of graphene on the vehicle. Okay, so there’s still much that is unknown about graphene and in particular getting it into a coating.
Let’S talk about ceramic coatings and and there’s different, i mean so you hear the word sio2 or the formula sio2, and then you hear nanotechnology and ceramic and quartz, and all that what is the main ingredient i mean is sio2 the same thing as nano. Is it the same thing as no it’s every the the the main thing is that they like these little buzzwords. We all do. It helps us understand ceramic, for example, it could be i’ve seen that used for a sealant. I’Ve seen that used for everything, but ceramic originally had to do.
It was defined by the molecular structure of nanotechnology, important things that has nanotechnology all these things you use and you can use different ingredients, but are you using nanotechnology? The three-dimensional um resin that adheres to paint the biggest thing is: how do we get this adhere here at the paint we got hills and valleys and paint um. How do we get in it’s? How do we get that to bond to the paint and it needs to be inorganic, so you need an inorganic structure because our organic structures, our carnauba, wax our paraffins everything else. It uh it has low melting points and it also ages quickly.
But that’s why they call these things. These are words like glass, coatings, sio2, so the different ingredients you can put in there and it’s still a nanotechnology. As long as you get the nanotechnology to adhere to the paint you’re, it’s going to be uh hydrophobic, it’s inner. As long as it’s inorganic, you don’t want to mix organic and inorganic prop properties, it really needs to be 100 percent, inorganic yeah and that’s a good ceramic coating to have on your vehicle and i think, the less solvents you use going to zero solvents 100 percent Solids, you get a thicker material left behind behind right, wipe off the residue, because you have that solvent in there kind of evaporates evaporates and then you leave the yeah and a lot of times. These ceramic coatings could be 90 solvents that evaporates and that 10 is left behind.
Okay, so you got a very, very thin layer, thin layer of protection. Now it can be very effective. A thin layer can be very effective on there right if it’s bound, if it bonds to it in a last long time, and you maintain maintain that it can be very effective as a detailer. I don’t really think about too much of how it’s working on a car, you just kind of know it works or it doesn’t work, you see it come back and it’s hydrophobic and it’s still shiny and you’re like yay. This is awesome when you’re putting a coating on a car, you’re talking about hills and valleys on the surface right is a coating filling.
Is that why it’s making it hydrophobic? Is it filling those hills and valleys and making it to a limited? No, no! That’S more of a filler different fillers. Do that very well um like a paraffin, something thicker than than nanotechnology.
Okay, in a minor way, you can call, but it really traces it traces, the hills and valleys and puts this little um protection on there, okay, but it fuses, even though it’s minor in that billionth, you know: um um nano means a billionth, though, in that one Billionth area it can fuse it can hold on to the hills and valleys, but it really traces that so it becomes smoothing effect with that. But i can’t say it really fills. It fills it unless there’s there’s a billionth it’ll fill all the all the hills and valleys that are a billionth in size yeah. Why is it hydrophobic well different resins that you can put in there um create that effect, but it’s hydrophobic, because you got all these little fingers in there that the beads just kind of rest on there and then, if you get a little wind or a little Tilt it’ll just roll off, but yet all millions of little these nano fingers hold up that water. That’S why it sits up so high.
That’S awesome! You blow my mind. If we can see the stuff up, close that’d be really cool yeah it’s hard to. They do have images of it, but it’s it’s hard to see all that working okay. Well, thank you.
This was very interesting eye opening i love it. I hope i helped in any way yeah i’d love to hear what you’re working on and and when you get it working too sure i’d love to hear that that’s awesome! Okay, thank you. Thank you, jim. If you drop a gram now, you owe me 10 bucks.
What’S going on connect to audio, what’s up man, how are you doing good good okay? So let me tell you where we’re at right now we went down to visit jim from dr beasley’s yesterday, and i was a bit uh kind of i was i was. I was surprised at what he said about it, and so he’s been testing graphene for six years and he actually had some graphene there. It was cool, i could see the actual product and he made an infused graphene coating that he actually sent to a lab and had it tested, you know, accelerated, tested a third-party testing and really what his results were. Is there wasn’t um a significant benefit over a nano coding um?
So in his words i mean he really thinks that graphene is is kind of a marketing uh. You know a word, a buzzword being thrown around right now because he couldn’t really uh in his testing and he him fully admitted to that. He was not an expert in graphene and he hasn’t tested any other products either he’s just testing on his own, but he couldn’t see a significant difference in benefit over a ceramic coating, and i guess i just wanted to talk to you and and kind of see, Because i know he was putting peer graphing in there, which i know is expensive, yes exactly, and that does actually make sense so to give you kind of a scope of what’s going on at least in the chemical realm. You know people can view what we do on the chemistry side is like we’re. The chef we’re not the farmer making the ingredients we’re not out there, making the molecules we’re taking we’re going through suppliers we’re going through a raw material suppliers asking them for certain molecules or certain ingredients um or taking what they have and mixing them in the products.
So i think, what’s going on, is that the molecule that we have that from our supplier, which you know they’ve been working on for the last two or three years – is that actual graphene bonded to the delivery system? That’S very similar to a ceramic? So we’re not actually taking graphene and putting it into an emulsion. The molecule itself is the graph being bonded to uh delivery and carrier system itself. So i think the companies that have played around with the graphene – you know, like, i think you know some other companies that come out saying grabbing an emulsion by itself, isn’t going to do much, which is very accurate.
You know i think, jim’s extremely accurate with that. Where, if you take graphing added to a ceramic coating, there’s not going to be much benefit to it, because you’re, basically just adding an emotion, there’s no way to actually have it bond to the substrate, whereas our manufacturer, our raw material supplier, found a way to actually Bond graphene to that delivery system, kind of like a glue that bonds it to the surface. That’S awesome. One thing i was reading yesterday was uh. There’S another company out there.
That has a coating, but it’s a it’s a it’s like a it’s. A graphene ceramic coating like it’s it’s it’s both of them together is that the same with yours is that all of them or um, i’m not sure exactly how they’re doing that i’d imagine it would be in a similar way because, like you said before, graphene and Ceramic coating is not going to have much benefit to it, so i’m not sure if they’re, adding graphing to the emulsion of a ceramic coating or if they’re, going through a similar. You know delivery system that we’re using ours. So you know, i have no idea what their supplier, what their chemistry is like on that side. So it could be one of the other if they’re marketed as a graphing ceramic coating and most likely is going to be something that is probably a ceramic coating with graphene added to it.
But then we wouldn’t see the benefits of the graphene and of itself. So it is an improvement on a ceramic coating if they’re, if their product is better than the ceramic coating options most likely, it is a similar delivery system, but it’s kind of hard to tell without knowing the real background behind their their chemistry. On that. No, it’s awesome and i think you know i think a majority of detailers in the industry are the kind of guys like me that don’t really know the chemistry side of it and not really into the manufacturing part of it and really um. I don’t really care what you call it or what you say it’s in it.
You know, i just know it works, it works really well or it doesn’t work. You know right and that’s. What i want to know is if it works great yeah, i don’t care what it is so yeah and that’s and that’s kind of the one thing i wanted to get across people, because it’s you know honestly when i, when we launched graphing matrix, i did not Think it’d be so polarizing and i did not think it would cost so much drama because you know us being like a newer, smaller company. I think you know we get grouped into that marketing category of trying to sell product, and you know i honestly, i didn’t think graphene would be as sweet of a hit as it was because i was just i was still thinking of product to market. That was, you know, an improvement on what’s out there.
You know, i’m excited that we kind of stumbled upon this chemistry at such an early stage, to be one of the first to offer something in the marketplace like this um, and i wasn’t trying to just ride the graphene train. If it was nano lean or titanium or something else, we would have gone that route with it. It just happens to be that we’re in the stage of development, where graphene has kind of been the next target. Next focus – and it’s been something that has you know, been improved upon in a way that has made you know certain characteristics, a lot better and you know the properties and, as you saw with the installation, i think that’s the most important benefit of this. This chemistry is that we can have um we’re able to have a higher activity level within our graphing codings and have an easier application.
So previously, with ceramics, you know you have a really high load level, which you know high activity level, which means the actual concentration of active ingredients. But then your application usually suffers it’s harder to wipe off. It’S secure. You know flashes a lot quicker, it’s sticky, so we got to add all these different additives in it and reduce the activity level to make it usable, whereas with graphene we’re able to load. You know crap out of the coating um almost 2x activity level over ceramic without affecting the actual performance.
So i think that’s what the consumer really should understand is that you know the our graphing matrix coding has a very, very high activity level while being super easy to use. So that, i think, is the big break through here is not necessarily just the performance but the ease of use without having to sacrifice one or the other. Well. Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to kind of explain everything.
Yeah, no problem, i’m happy to help and, like i said it’s definitely a cool improvement industry. I think we’ve seen and i’m looking forward to seeing kind of what your testing shows as well. You know long term, especially for performance testing, so cool brother. I appreciate the time man, of course, any time and i’ll be talking to you soon. I appreciate you doing the research here too.
I can tell you’re putting a lot of time into this, so yeah, all right, brother man, awesome, happy talking to you how you doing bye. Well, let’s go put this stuff to the test. I think it’s important to know as much as you can about the products that you’re using get as much information as possible. I think it helps you determine when you should use a product in a particular situation, and i also think that it’s important for you to know everything you can about a product. So you can talk intelligently to your customers, about what they’re getting and the benefits of those products.
With that being said, as a detailer, i’m really only looking for one thing: does the product perform well, does it do what it say it’s going to do and how well does it stand up so it’s time to figure out how these products hold up. This hood’s been curing for two weeks. Now you can see it’s dusty, it’s dirty. We got a few different tests. We’Re gon na do to see how well graphing works versus the ceramic coating.
We’Re gon na do a water spot test. We’Re gon na. Do a temperature test and then we’re going to do a durability test, we’re going to throw some chemicals at this and see how well they hold up to those chemicals. So let’s get started we’re going to wash the thing first, i want to see the water behavior see if there’s any difference between the ceramic side and the graphene side. So as far as water behavior goes, i don’t really see a whole lot of difference here.
We’Re going to try this hose and see they both look, awesome well sheet water. Very nice leave this one alone, but it keeps coming back so we got over here. We got 115, 113, 116, 115, 116, 115, 112, 108, 111, 112. So the graphene side seems a couple degrees warmer than the ceramic side, which was opposite of what i was thinking. It was going to do it’s now time for the water spotting test.
Graphene coatings claim that they have less water spotting than the ceramic coating. So i brought some hose water from my house, which i know has left water spots on cars that i’ve already washed before so we’re gon na. Let this we’re gon na pour some of this hard water on the hood we’re gon na. Let it sit there we’re gon na, let it bake for a couple hours and we’re gon na see uh the difference between the two and which has better water, spotting capabilities. Look at all those minerals left behind the moment, so a quick, wash and then dry.
I didn’t do anything that i wouldn’t normally do. I use the same pressure washing it and drying it, and you guys can look up close here and you can see that there is water spotting on both sides. I think actually, before we did the test, we had a little more water spotting on the on the ceramic side versus the graphene side, and it looks now like the ceramic side, did a little better with the water spotting versus the graphene side. You can see on this side. We have some heavy deposits still going on the graphing side, where we still have those same spots over at the on the crystal serum light side, but they’re not as many.
I got one two three, four, five, six, you know kind of predominant ones over here i got one two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight nine 10 11 12 that i can still really see: [ Applause ] up next w9 water spot remover. Let’S see how it does, it took a couple of them away, but i still see one two three here: i’m gon na do this side: all right that helped, but i can still see kind of remnants of a water spot right there. I got some streaks with this stuff too, and then i can definitely see some remnants on the graphene side. Several of them coatings in general, nano coating, ceramic coatings or graphene coatings are supposed to be more resistant to chemicals, so we’re going to do a chemical test and hopefully find out which one of these coatings is more durable. I have four chemicals that we’re going to try out here.
We have just an all-purpose, cleaner, a super degreaser. We have w8 bug remover and then a wheel cleaner. I don’t expect any of these to have an effect on these coatings. These coatings should be able to handle these products no problem at all. Let’S test these products out and then after we see what these do, i got some heavier ones we’re going to throw at it and really see how chemical resistant they are.
First up is gtechnic. W8 bug remover, both look fantastic next up, sonax wheel, cleaner plus. Next, this is all-purpose cleaner. This is d101 from mcguire’s. This is mix 10-1, but i’m still stumbling in still looks the same up.
Next super degreaser from mcguires all right as i suspected all those uh chemicals didn’t really have any effect on either of the coatings, so we’re gon na move on to something a little stronger. This is hydrofluoric acid. All right that held up pretty nice up next. This is isopropyl alcohol. This is at 99 strength here.
Let’S see if i have anything else, because i don’t want to. I got something really heavy, we’ll go full strength, all-purpose, cleaner, remover, All right! This is the heaviest stuff. I got right here, we’re gon na, throw it at it carb and choke cleaner.
This is some heavy stuff. Well there. It is guys i just wanted to present as much information about these two coatings as possible for you guys in a non-biased type of fashion. You can see the durability test here. I threw every single chemical that we have in the shop at it and they both are standing up.
Uh strong to that. So i’d love to hear your guys’s opinion in the comments down below what you think, and i think the best thing that you guys could do is get both of these coatings for yourself. Try them out test them. You should always be testing different chemicals to find out. What’S the best value out there, what’s the best option for your customer, what’s the best option for your vehicle so check it out, you can buy both these products on cardsupplieswarehouse.
om i’ll, put links in the description below thanks for watching guys, see you next time. Bonus footage. We’Re gon na try something else. Last test we’re gon na polish each side here and then wipe it down. I’M gon na do one pass just one pass and see if that removes either of these coatings.
Next, i’m going to use the wax and tar remover to remove all those polishing, oils. Well, it’s gone. I was hoping one of them would hold up to that test, but nope, neither of them everything’s, just kind of sheeting off no more hydraulic properties.
