jgerard
Registered User
Seattle, WA
Regarding waterborne specific paint guns I think it may just be a sales pitch by manufactures. I use a SATA 3000B digital ($550) paint gun, Dan Stewart uses an IWATA LPH400 ($500) and we both have used the DeVilbiss Finish line III ($140) None of these guns are "waterborne" guns. I called IWATA to talk with their engineers about their new top of the line paint gun the "Supernova" which is available as a base coat or clear coat gun and also available in a LVLP or normal HVLP. They recommend their clear coat gun for shooting our single stage top coat paint. The LVLP gun will work on 19 psi and 10 cfm. I was told the Japanese had the best LVLP guns and IWATA is probably the leader of Japanese paint guns. I know people are on a budget but seriously the only thing other people are going to see is your paint job. Why skimp on the equipment used. It's a fact that the SATA and IWATA guns do a better job of atomizing paint and they have a larger fan width which really helps production time. If you spend $500+ dollars on a gun I'm not going to promise it will lay down a perfect paint job. Technique is mostly what affects the finish not the gun but a great gun sure helps. You can sell a top of the line paint gun when you're done with the project for almost as much as you paid for it. A less expensive gun has almost no resell value. It is also important to have clean dry air and hoses for painting. Only use 3/8" rubber hoses and the only quick disconnect should be a special high flow fitting between the gun and air hose. Waterborne paints are all about being able to atomize the paint into the smallest droplets possible. If you hold the gun to close you can blow excess air into the paint film which can cause pinholes, if you hold it back to far the paint will loose some of it's atomization and fall to the surface in larger droplets creating a dry or orange peel affect. What I'm trying to say is PRACTICE!! and not on airplane parts. Practice on stuff you can throw away
The paint is not hard to use and once you understand the parameters it's extremely forgiving and you can get away with stuff that would totally ruin a solvent based paint job. If you research online about auto body shops switching to waterborne paint they all had to go through a leaning curve but once the figured out what they were doing wrong they absolutely love shooting waterborne paint. Waterborne is the Future of painting and I have spoken to many professionals that have no desire to return to solvent based products.
For the thousands of gallons of paint we sell it is surprising how FEW problems our customers have spraying it and 99% of those problems are equipment or technique related.
Jason
The paint is not hard to use and once you understand the parameters it's extremely forgiving and you can get away with stuff that would totally ruin a solvent based paint job. If you research online about auto body shops switching to waterborne paint they all had to go through a leaning curve but once the figured out what they were doing wrong they absolutely love shooting waterborne paint. Waterborne is the Future of painting and I have spoken to many professionals that have no desire to return to solvent based products.
For the thousands of gallons of paint we sell it is surprising how FEW problems our customers have spraying it and 99% of those problems are equipment or technique related.
Jason