-
The more stages a turbine has, the more air volume it can move at a given pressure, and also can generate more pressure with each additional stage. The thicker the coating, the larger the opening in the nozzle needs to be. The larger the nozzle opening, the more volume of air is required to atomize. Also, the thicker the coating being sprayed, the more pressure it takes to atomize it. The thicker the coating material, the more volume, and pressure it takes to spray it nicely.
This is why the fewer the stages in the turbine, the thinner the coating being sprayed needs to be. No gun alone can solve this.
There continues to be advances made with all the difference types of spraying. For instance, when they came out with Fine Finish tips for airless, and later Fine Finish Low Pressure tips, it made Air Assisted Airless superfluous for many coatings, and overlapped into the area that HVLP turbines covered for heavier coatings. The first time I ever used a Fine Finish tip in my airless rig, I put my top end turbine rig up for sale.
There is no simple answer that covers it all. It's a complicated subject. The short answer is that you can't do professional, factory, or better quality spraying with cheap equipment.
-
You don't need much extra equipment to get great results with shellac and WB finishes. I have nothing more than the factory regulator and separator that came with my compressor, another to step down from 90 psi to 29 psi that I normally run my gun at, and a cheap HF air filter at the inlet to the gun. I live in WNY and don't have to deal with a lot of water in my compressor but there is still some. What I listed above has worked fine. Start out simple and add stuff only when warranted.
John
-
I think I’ll go with the simple path as mentioned and pick up a small container of the proclassic and see how I can brush it on.
If I don’t like it then I’ll try something out that my equipment will handle.
-
It sands really nicely after a day of curing, so brushing on a thin coat for the final coat might work out okay after sanding the previous, thicker coat.
I did a whole room with it recently, walls, and trim, and we sanded the walls lightly with a ROS using 180 before spraying the final coat. Several people asked what kind of wall it was, since they had never seen sheetrock walls this smooth.
-
You used pro classic for the walls? I’ve only just started learning about this product but is that more durability than usually needed for painting drywall?
-
Yes, but it was an unusual room. They call it the Sunroom, and it has windows lining three walls. They wanted it all semi-gloss white, so it was easier just to spray the trim, and walls at the same time, than having to cut in all the windows. The windows (something over 20 of them) were all casements, so we just opened the sash, and closed them back on the masking film plastic, spraying the casing, and jamb extensions at the same time, as the walls. It's the only time I've ever used it on walls, but it did come out looking fantastic.
That room also has a beaded board cathedral ceiling, with crown molding. It took two five gallon buckets of ProClassic in that room, and we didn't have much left over.
Last edited by Tom M King; 04-20-2019 at 6:03 PM.
-
Wow. I can understand the reasoning on this room. Since everything was sprayed and a lot together, this must have gone fairly fast?
-
Worst part was dragging around the hose for the supplied air hood. I tie it to the airless hose with short shoelaces, so I only have one tail to deal with. With moving the ladder around for the cathedral ceiling, since I didn't want to fumble with changing tip extensions, and carefully dealing with my "tail", it might have taken 15 minutes per coat. The good thing about airless is that, since there is no air in the system, all I had to do until the next coat was take the tip off the gun, drop the gun in a bucket of water, and put Saran Wrap over the top of the paint in the bucket, and it can be left until the next coat another day. Tip guard, and tip is just cleaned out in a sink under running water, and a drop of oil put in the orifice.
Last edited by Tom M King; 04-20-2019 at 7:25 PM.
-
Had some time to chew on all the good info you have mentioned.
If I could ask some more questions for learning sake:
What I kept seeing in terms of airless setups was how much overspray and waste of paint those typically result in. When you mentioned the fine finish and FF LP tips, does that for the most part contradict the overspray and waste issues now?
For something like SW PC, is that something you would apply with your airless unit using a fine finish or LP fine finish tip?
If you put your turbine unit up for sale, do you then go between your air assisted unit and your airless unit for any project requiring spraying?
Also, you mentioned not wanting to use you good conversion guns without some kind of air filter such as a refrigerated dryer unit. I understand the concept of what it would do for air quality, but is the same result achieved through some of the home made setups for removing water in the line? It's been a while but I recall seeing pictures of some manifold looking setups that were aimed to filter/trap any moisture in the compressed air, all used in line with a conversion gun.
Last edited by Jeremy Patrick; 04-22-2019 at 3:32 PM.
-
FYI, and I think Tom mentioned it somewhere along the way, but airless units tend to put out finish really, really fast. That makes them great for large surfaces; far less so for furniture and most projects a hobbiest would want to spray. Also, you can't even prime one of those units with say a couple of ounces of finish, but that's more than enough for a repair job with a detail HVLP or LVLP gun. What you should buy very much depends upon the type of project you most often want to spray.
An airless unit requires no thinning for really thick products like SW's ProClassic, but neither does an air assisted HVLP gun like I have. I still might choose to thin it a little, or add a little Extender, so it flows out better, but it will atomize it just fine.
I have not looked at the price of a good quality airless like a Kremlin in quite some time, but IIRC they are several multiples over the price of good HVLP gun.
John
-
After seeing some of the videos of airless units, I had the notion it was aimed at large coverage. Although with the mention of the fine finishing tips, wouldn't that drastically reduce the amount of finish being sprayed making it more suited for smaller projects like furniture?
-
No. They still move a lot of paint, but just at much lower pressure than they used to, so you don't get all the bounceback of paint particles that you used to get with the old school airless. They would be okay for furniture, if you were doing production, but it would hardly be worth the trouble for a piece or two. I wouldn't bother to stick the pickup into any container smaller than a gallon. It'll still move a third of a gallon a minute if you hold the trigger open. There are many choices in fan widths, and orifice size that all are controlled by the tip size, so you can spray almost anything with them if you are quick, and co-ordinated.
If you are using a thinner coating, like lacquer, there are other systems better suited for it, although if I was doing a large set of kitchen cabinets, I would probably use the airless rig. If I was doing cabinets every day, I would use Air Assisted Airless, which is another system altogether that uses compressed air to blow out the hard edges on the airless fan when you use a really low pressure.
Turbine rigs are a sort of Jack of all Trades for paint systems, but not really great at any of them. You can do a good job with them, but they are really slow. They're a good self-contained system for a hobbyist, but you won't see many pros using them on large jobs.
-
Gotcha. I wouldn't be trying to buy anything in the airless range, just curious since tidbits have been mentioned.
But a third of a gallon in a minute? damn.... that is a lot.
Just got back from SW to pick up a small container of proclassic and saw the various Graco equipment and accessory assortment. I didn't look too close but I did see the wide variety of tips and such.
In a somewhat short term future forecast I might try to get an air filtration setup going and see what I can do with something like the Qualspray guns. But further than that look into one of the higher end Fuji setups. All of that of course will depending on what money I can throw at this since it's not my primary job. Would say that a tax refund time would be a nice chunk to throw at something like this, but the last refund wasn't anything great!
-
If you are thinking that a turbine unit will spray better than a conversion gun you are mistaken. The only benefit to a turbine gun is someone put all the components together so everything works together, and portability. Other than that, there is no advantage as far as I know. I have nothing against a turbine rig, but found conversion guns offer more capability and versatility.
You may find it hard to believe, but the $10 HF purple HVLP gun sprays low viscosity materials incredibly well. I started with guns only a little more expensive than that and I was never disappointed in the quality of the finish they could lay down, only in maintenance and seals. I bought the Qualspray gun primarily because of the pressure feed system and multiple N/N capabilities, which allows me to spray a wider range of finishes w/o thinning, not because I thought it would give me a higher quality finish.
You don't have to spend a lot to get an excellent sprayed finish. It's more about the person pulling the trigger than the trigger being pulled.
John
-
A master has spoken!
No I wasn’t under the impression that a turbine unit shoots better. I should have worded my last post better. When I was looking at prices of things, it seemed with my current equipment I would be able to start with something like the qualspray for a lower expense than a higher end system like a Fuji q5.
I suppose I threw out picking up something like a q5 since I’ve seen so many people comment on their high end hvlp setups and how much they can do with them. So it was more of a thought of having another tool if I could afford it at a later point. Maybe I’ll even be at the point where I’m able to do all that I need or want to and never have the need for something like a Fuji unit.
But like you said per se, the machine doesn’t make the project perfect, the person using it does.
What you had mentioned of the versatility of the qualspray gun is what I locked onto. If I can continue fine tuning my technique with something like that or even a HF gun, I’d be more than happy. Being able to work with a wide variety of finishes is what I’m really interested in.
Posting Permissions
- You may not post new threads
- You may not post replies
- You may not post attachments
- You may not edit your posts
-
Forum Rules
Reply With Quote