Paint curing - Air dry vs heat lamps

Does curing urethane paint with lamps help make the paint any more durable, or is the only benefit faster drying times for production purposes?

I have a set of steel mopar wheels that need painted body color on the outside and was curious if it's worth it to pay a shop to bake them or just let them cure on their own.

Time and a couple sunny Idaho days should cure it well. The lamps will just speed the process I think. Urethane (two part I assume) gets hard pretty fast so it shouldn't be excessivly tender after 2-3 days of air curing.

Baking the paint will actually make it die back and not look as glassy. It is better to always let it dry naturally when you can. It will harden the same either way. I am a master painter and painting is my job. When I paint a car at the end of the day. I will let it air dry overnight. Alot nicer results. Baking paint is only for production purposes. So you can paint multiple cars in a day ,instead of just one.

Urethanes dry by 2 different methods. One is solvent evaporation and the other is cross-linking of the catalyzed components. Baking is purely for production. A few sunny warm days will do the trick.

Thanks for the replies.

I'll just paint them myself when it warms up enough. We are in the 50's and 60's, but it keeps getting cloudy and raining every other day. As soon as we get a warm and dry streak going I'll give it a shot.

Quote:

---

I am a master painter Baking paint is only for production purposes.

---

Ahhh I always thought the bulbs in a paint booth were to harden the paint & obviously they would dry it faster. Deciding whether to try barbeque grill paint or have some headers chromed. Not so concerned about looks as I am about staving off them rusting out