Every correction job you have done was limited by one thing before the pad touched paint: whether you could actually see the defect. Shop high-bays flatten a panel. Daylight lies by the hour. Holograms stay hidden until the customer rolls under a gas-station canopy at dusk and calls you Monday. SCANGRIP builds one thing — inspection light — and files every unit here under one product line, Detailing & Colour Match. This is the range we stock, decoded, using only figures SCANGRIP publishes.
Two Numbers Decide Whether A Light Is Worth Owning
Color rendering comes first. CRI measures how honestly a light reproduces color. SCANGRIP defines its CRI+ term as an average of all 15 R-values — a stricter yardstick than the eight-value average most work lights quote. Nearly every light here is published at CRI+ greater than 95.
Color temperature comes second. Measured in Kelvin, it decides which defects show up at all. A warm 2500K beam rakes low and throws long shadows out of fine scratching. A cool 6500K beam reads like open daylight and exposes haze, tracer marks, and color mismatch. No single temperature reveals everything, which is why the serious lights change it on demand. Lumens are the least useful number of the three: a 3000-lumen light with mediocre color rendering hides a hologram better than a 200-lumen light that renders honestly.
WHAT "CCT SCAN" MEANS, AND WHICH LIGHTS HAVE IT. Three lights sweep the full 2500K to 6500K spectrum automatically and lock wherever you want: Multimatch 3 Connect, Multimatch R, Sunmatch 4. Starmatch and I-Match 3 cover the same range with ALL DAYLIGHT — five fixed color temperatures, not a stepless sweep. Unimatch gets there on a manual dial. Same job either way: change the light until the defect appears.
Starmatch: The Light That Rides The Polisher
The SCANGRIP Starmatch mounts directly to the machine, and that single fact changes how a long correction day runs. You stop setting the polisher down to go look.
SCANGRIP publishes 200 lumen at full and 100 at half, a curved 180°/60° beam shaped to the panel, and five selectable color temperatures across 2500K to 6500K. Runtime is 5 hours at maximum, 10 at minimum, and the 18650 cell is exchangeable and charges over USB-C — pull the dead one, drop a charged one in, keep working. IP65, IK07, 164 grams, with a universal handle-thread mounting kit and a RUPES bracket in the box. On a RUPES BigFoot LHR15 Mark V — 15 mm orbit, 500 W, 125 mm plate — the light travels with the pad instead of sitting on a cart behind you.
Multimatch: When You Are Reading Whole Panels
The Multimatch 3 Connect is the heavy artillery: 3000 lumen at full, stepping down through 2250, 1500, 750 and 300, a 110° beam, 32 watts, stepless CCT SCAN with a lock at any point. It ships without a battery on purpose — Metabo and CAS 18V packs mount straight to it, any other 18V or 20V pack runs it through a SCANGRIP CONNECTOR, and a Power Supply Connect gives you corded runtime. SCANGRIP publishes 3 to 30 hours on an 18V 5.2Ah pack. Know before you park it outside: IP30 bare, IP65 with the power supply fitted.
The Multimatch R is the portable version of the same idea — 1200 lumen down to 120 across five levels, the same stepless CCT SCAN, a 100° beam, IP67 and IK07, and powerful magnets in the handle so it grabs a fender, a jack stand, or a trailer frame. Charger included, USB power bank built in.
The Hand Lights: Sunmatch, I-Match, Unimatch, Match Pen
Sunmatch 4. The most complete single light in the range. 500 lumen main beam on a stepless dimmer, full CCT SCAN, plus a separate 200 lumen 4000K spotlight for tight work. Head tilts to 180°; turnable hook, magnet, belt clip, charging base. IP65, IK07, 267 grams, 2 hours at maximum and 10 at minimum. Expect one published behavior: thermal protection drops output to 50 percent after three minutes continuous at high. That is the light protecting itself, not a failing battery.
I-Match 3. A headlamp, so both hands stay on the work. 25 to 250 lumen stepless, CRI 96+, five daylight color temperatures, a 120°/60° beam, IP65, 100 grams on the band. The useful detail is the infrared sensor — wave a gloved hand to switch it, no compound on the switch.
Unimatch. Fifty grams, converting between headlamp and penlight. 150 lumen main plus a 75 lumen 15° spot, CRI+ greater than 95, stepless color temperature on a side dial. Headband, cap mount, magnet, clip. Rated IP20 — an indoor tool.
Match Pen R. The swirl finder. 100 lumen, a focusing beam from 10° to 45°, 8000 lux at half a meter, aluminum body with a solvent-resistant lens, IP30, 90 grams. SCANGRIP names its job plainly: detection of scratches, pinholes, and swirl marks.
READ THE MATCH PEN R SPEC BEFORE YOU BUY IT. It is published at Ra greater than 90, and SCANGRIP publishes no CRI+ figure for it at all. Two fixed color temperatures, 4500K and 6500K — not a scan. That makes it an excellent defect-finding pen and a poor color-matching light. It does not inherit the CRI+ or IK ratings of its stablemates.
Run The Light Off Batteries You Already Own
SCANGRIP's CONNECTOR system is the quietly smart part of the catalog. One connector per battery brand, sold separately, clipped onto a CONNECT-series light — and the 18V or 20V packs already charging on your bench become light. We stock connectors for FLEX, DeWalt, and RUPES packs, plus the SCANGRIP CAS 18V 5.2Ah Li-Power battery. One published caveat, because it will bite somebody: older versions of the DeWalt connector are not compatible with DeWalt 18V Powerstack batteries.
If your bay already runs FLEX — say a FLEX XFE 15 150, a free-spinning 15 mm random orbital on the 18V platform — the FLEX connector puts your polisher packs into the light. FLEX also builds its own TrueView Detailing Light: up to 3000 lumen, 2500K to 6500K in five stages, RA 96, IP67, up to 30 hours at 300 lumen off the same batteries.
Light Is Half The Inspection. Chemistry Is The Other Half.
A light cannot see through filler. Polish oils, wax, and residue sit on the surface masking the defects you are hunting. Koch-Chemie Panel Prep Spray is the answer, and Koch-Chemie's own word for it is a control spray: alcohol-based, ready to use, it strips oils, waxes, and polish residues, and Koch-Chemie states the point outright — holograms and scratches, if present, are revealed on the degreased surface. That is when your light finally tells you the truth.
Then the light tells you which step you need. Koch-Chemie's naming is the spec sheet — the number is the abrasion level, the subscript the gloss level. Heavy Cut H9.02 runs 9.0 to 6.0 and clears sanding traces to 1200 grain; Fine Cut F6.01 is 6.0 to 7.0 for wash-system scratching; Micro Cut M3.02 is 3.2 to 9.0, the follow-on for both. Full ladder in The Koch-Chemie Polish System, Decoded.
Malco reads the same way, in grit: Epic Heavy Duty Compound to P1500, Epic Medium Duty Compound to P2500, Epic Finishing Polish after either. Run them on Lake Country HDO CCS foam — Blue Heavy Polishing, Orange Polishing, Black Finishing, sorted out in the Lake Country Pad Guide. Before a coating, Epic Ceramic Final Prep Wipe clears residual waxes so it adheres — and that wipe is when the light comes back out.
Working Where There Is No Bay
Marine. White gelcoat is the hardest surface in this business to read honestly. Holograms in a white topside vanish under a marina's overhead fixtures and reappear the first bright Saturday on the water. A warm sweep at the 2500K end, raked low, throws them up in seconds — and hulls get worked on a trailer or a stand, rarely under good light, which is why cordless matters more here than anywhere.
Agricultural and fleet. Green and red sheet metal under sodium fixtures or cheap shop LEDs reads completely flat. Hook a Sunmatch 4 on a combine hood or magnet a Multimatch R to a fender and you get an honest look at six seasons of UV. On a recon job the inspection is most of the work, because the light decides which panels get polished and which get left alone. Wipe with an Eagle 600 and look again before you call it done.
The Bottom Line
Build it in this order. Start with one hand light that changes color temperature — Sunmatch 4 is the most complete single unit here. Add the Starmatch when you are polishing all day and sick of putting the machine down. Add a Multimatch when you are reading whole panels or matching color. Keep a Match Pen R in your pocket for finding defects, not judging them. And strip the panel with Panel Prep Spray before you trust anything you see.
Inspection lighting is the cheapest quality control in a detail shop. You cannot correct what you cannot see — and you cannot charge for work nobody can see either. If it runs, rolls, or floats, we help it shine.
Not sure which light fits your bay? Call the shop at (402) 890-4589 — real pros, real answers. High Limit Detail Supply is a division of Whitehead Oil Company. Built for the bay, the barn, and the backroads.