Mobile dent detector

luix_luix

Member
Hi guys!

I've been reading this forum for quite a while (and the community is great), however this is my first post :)

I recently bought (1 month ago) a used Z4 e89 2012 mineral white with M sport package and I'm having a blast! Unfotunately, last week some idiot dinged my car on a parking lot (I always park defensively, but these things still happen :( ).

So, I'm taking the car on friday to a PDR tech (there seems to be very few people that do PDR down here in Chile) so he removes the ding. But before leaving the car with him I want to make a full check on my car to identify if there is another ding that I haven't noticed, so the PDR technician repairs them all at once.

Before buying the car I did a very good visual inspection (and my trusted mechanic checked the mechanical part) so if there is another ding it has to be a very minor one, however as I'm a little OCD regarding the condition of my car I want it to be absolutely perfect. Fortunately I came up with a solution to easily detect dings on my car :thumbsup: .

Probably many of you have already thought of this before, but I still want to share it with you in case it can be of help to anyone.

Have you ever seen how PDR techs use some lighted panels with special patterns so that the dents instantly jump to bare sight? This allows them to detect the ding and to work on it. For an example of how these panels work watch this image:

IjlwcSW.jpg

Well... based on this I present to you the MDD (Mobile Dent Detector)! :thumbsup:

The MDD is simply an image (made using paint lol), with a pattern similar to those the PDR techs use, that I saved on my phone. So when I want to detect a dent I just go to my cell phone gallery, select the image and display it in full screen mode. Then I put the screen looking at my car's direction so the pattern is reflected on my car's body. It works better if you adjust your screen to max brightness.

Below you can find the image so you can save it!

As you are always carrying your cell phone (or at least you should lol) this will also help all of the paranoic guys like me that check his car for door dings or anything else each time you are about to leave a public parking lot :D

wMPo7aU.png

Sorry for the loooooong post and I hope this is helpfull!

Cheers

P.S. Please forgive any bad English, it is not my native language.
 
Very good, I have a silver car and most of the time I can't see the small dings dents, but sometimes I do.

I need to count the dents and send photos to get a price for PDR repair this will help me... thanks :D

Welcome to the forum :thumbsup:
 
yeah its a very basic but handy tool, all it does is allow you to see any creases in the body line as the reflection of light from the stripey panel looks really disturbed at any non-uniformity in the normals of the panels. its the same effect as having a large room full of fluorescent tubes when cars are manufactured which allows q/c to check the paint and body.

I use this tool in CAD programes funnily enough, you apply the pattern over the body of a surface and it allows you to clearly see any points in a free flowing curve where the tangential or normals or whatever aren't all continuous i.e when your merging surfaces to construct complex forms, such as rear wings :) which is very difficult to actually get right so then it disturbs the reflection of light at that point hence you only notice the small little dings or dents under very specific lighting conditions :)
 
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