Video | Scangrip Sunmatch & Multimatch Lighting
by James MelfiHaving the right lighting is key to identifying paint defects and achieving a desirable paint correction result. Scangrip lights have been a staple in the shop, and in this video, we highlight two of their workhorse lights. First up the Sunmatch 3, a handheld, water/dustproof light with 5 color temperature modes and 500 lumens. The Multimatch 3 is perfect for illuminating entire panels and spotting defects from different angles. The Multimatch 3 has 5 color temperature modes, and 3000 lumens, all controlled by a wifi enabled smartphone app.
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00:00
Hey guys, James here, we’re working on a Tesla model three and it has some absolutely hammered paint and it was the, you know, I’m going, I’m going by it and I’m like, perfect opportunity to shoot a lighting video. Talk a little bit about lighting, how to spot defects, all that stuff and the products that we’d like to use in the shop. And on the whole, the one line of products that we’ve absolutely grown to love and can not live without is the scangrip lineup. And the reason why that is partially because this has literally allowed us to see things that we probably weren’t seeing, you know, back in the day. You know, rewind five, six years ago, more than that, right? We had the Brinkman we had these little handheld, we were using tactical flashlights, which are still great. But these lights really, at least for me, kind of opened my eyes like, Oh my God, was I missing some stuff back?
00:57
You know, back in, back in the day. And I have absolutely loved these lights at being able to see all kinds of defects. So even, you know, in the midst of a correction, you know, you, you know, we used to use big halogen lights and we would probably see the majority of the heavy defects, but maybe the micro marring, maybe some really faint stuff we were missing. That’s where these lights came into play. And the nice thing about these is you can change the color temperature. You can change the brightness level so you can do a lot. I mean, these were originally designed to be able to check re painted panels and see if it was a nice match between original paint and, and obviously repaint re painted panel and up. But obviously for the detailing detailing industry, we’ve grown to love them because they do, these lights do such a great job at spotting swirls, scratching, hazing all of those kinds of things.
01:59
And being able to change the color temperature is one of those things where we’ve really, we’ve just loved that part of it. Color, temperature, distance from the panel, all that stuff comes into play when you’re thinking about spotting defects and how to approach it. There are some paints particularly like silvers and dark grays and stuff like that where you could be literally right on it and it might appear perfect, but as you slowly start to back up and move the light source farther away from the panel, all of a sudden stuff is coming into focus and there was a swirl there. There’s a deep rid here and there. So distance is a huge factor. Color temperature. I mean on this red it seems like the white light color temperature brings out some of the defects more. So this, this is basically the sun match three, I think this is the latest scan grip version and they’ve all been great since the beginning.
03:02
They’re indestructible we’ve literally been tossing these on the ground since we’ve got them. They come with a wall mountable charger where you’d basically just put it right in. Obviously the batteries rechargeable so you’re not worried about batteries and stuff like that. It’s a light that it has a nice little clip here on the back. So like my thing is I always like to keep them kind of on my, you know, in my pocket. So I’m always on the fly. Obviously it’s moveable. You have this, this magnetic thing here. So for automotive paint, I, you know, obviously you never want to be sticking it to the, to the paint work, but you know, if you are like in a, under the hood mechanical situation, you could stick it up on the hood and you know, move it down like this and obviously have it fixed.
03:48
Great for like, if you have wheels off and you can, and you’re, you’re detailing the calipers, you can fix it to something and, and tilt it. The thing we like to do is with this is what sometimes we like to, you know, move it, place it on the ground and then come from a different angle just to see what the defects look from. You’re almost kind of, you’re looking towards the light source opposed to, you know, being behind it. Angle is another thing that comes into play when looking at defects. But just an awesome light. The second light that we use all the time is this, this big guy. There’s been scangrip, has released a bunch of these larger units over the years. This is the scangrip. Oh no, I’m already forgetting which one. It is a multi match now and now I’m already losing it.
04:40
But the multimatch three. Yes. and it’s one of those lights that again, multiple color temperatures, obviously brighter. This is about 3000 lumens. Nice thing about this that they’ve just released is that it is Bluetooth enabled. So there is literally a scan grip app. How cool is that? That we can turn it on which we’re going to do right now. And we can change the color temperature. We can, we can change the brightness level. And we can kind of do all, you know, all those kinds of cool things right from our phone, which is just a cool thing to do. But this light, what we like, this particular light for this, this scangrip is your day to day. This is your, you know, doing interior work. This is spotting defects, doing inspections. This is checking the wheel Wells.
05:32
This is your workhorse. You have this on your person, right? This light in my opinion is all about your correction jobs. This is you. You may be, have two of these. You can obviously they come with variety of these stands where you can Mount two units. You could have two separate ones of these stands and obviously I have two going in opposite directions, which might be ideal. And these are for inspecting things that you might not see with the smaller handheld. These are, you know, checking your angles, checking your distance, really spotting, making sure that what you’re seeing is really gone. You know, that this is kind of like your, your last resort. You know, making sure that everything that you’re trying to remove from the paint is being removed. And obviously this does a great job at just general inspection as well.
06:23
Or it can be a great just general work light. We use this a lot for, for PPF where if we’re doing a clear bra installation, we’ll set these up. And just they’re just a great light source. They also come with the rechargeable packs. This is the rechargeable pack, which I actually like these, this design a lot better than the previous models. It comes with a charger, a nice slide on system boom, plug it into the wall and it’d be always, it’s always nice to have a couple of these where on the fly. If we actually let me just shut this off. If we, how did we do this? If we come back here you can see the, the battery pack here, just push slide out, comes right out. And you can put the new one right back in there, slide it in and you’re right back at it.
07:17
Just a really scangrip for me has completely changed the game when it comes to detailing, lighting, helping us spot defects and just creating super durable. They’re all waterproof, they’re all dust proof. We can throw chemicals on them. I’ve been dropping these lights all over the place. They’re just a super durable solution for helping us do what we need to do, which is make paint look great. If you have any questions about the scangrip lineup, definitely shoot me a, a comment or an email with love to help you guys out. Thanks for watching. See you guys. Next time.
Hey JAMES, I find your instructional articles and videos to be well presented, detailed “ no pun “ intended, and very useful. I have however just come to the realization that the industry is marketing, with its intended audience “the Detailer’s”, at such a over the top rate and with a ferocity that has quite frankly been making me a bit jaded, discouraged, and dare I say feel like one of the have nots. I’m sure Scangrip is a great company and makes great lighting. However, I am in my 3rd year of running my own detailing business and I have made mistakes in what I thought would do the job as far as lighting. Some of it good for the price a startup like me had to spend. It’s just the costs of the lights, the steamers, extractor, compressors, especially when there seems to be no competition, it’s Scangrip or your doing inferior work. Perhaps it’s sour grapes I just feel like I gotta go to Ferrari level products with a Ford pocketbook. Oh well someday, thanks for your help, I always get something good out of your detailing techniques.
Hey Warren-
Man, I know exactly how you fee. There can be a lot of over-hype and marketing thrown at us daily, which can make it hard to decipher what we need and what would be a luxury item. Trust me I’ve definitely bought countless things I probably really didn’t need. I can honestly say though- that the Scangrip lights are a game changer. They have changed the way I spot defects and have probably made we a better paint polisher in the process. I so appreciate the support and I hope some of these videos help in your product research.