fella spray-finishers
The finishing tools around my shop include everything from airbrushes to airless application tools. Day to day cleaning of the siphonoid tools ain’t really a problem, i just dump the dissassembled guns into a tub of reducer, scrub-em-up, dry em off, and reassemble. The airless ain’t much more difficult.
I’m mostly spraying laquers or solvent base finishes with the equipment in question here. There are other airless tools for the latex finishes.
The pressure pots themselves haven’t been much more difficult to clean. I have one for clear, and another for solids. When finished, I run my filtered “gun cleaner” reducer through em till they flow easy, drain the hoses and then run clean reducer through them.
Each pot has it’s own gun and hoses, and I do have after market filters on the guns.
Although I use gallon cans in the pots (no liners), I do clean them after each use, and occasionally I dissasemble the pot fittings and clean out debris, and I also have cleaned out the hoses in the past.
So this aft. I was spraying some zinzer ( clean up with ammonia!!) primer through the pressure pots , and after changing a coupla inline paint filters which got clogged up real quick, I just took em out of the system. Spray went well, but in clean up, I pulled the gun off the hose, ran my reducer through it and thought that the flow was substantially less than what I should get. Ergo….I know I gotta clean out the hose.
Oh, I guess I could just keep changing filters every five minutes , but at 10 bucks a pop, that soon adds up…..
OK, dissassembling the pot and the gun is not exactly rocket science, that I can do.
I can also clean out the hose -described later. .
But here is my question…..What do other, more knowledgable folks do to clean their hoses? Or do you?
If you tell me that you just run laquer thinner through it, that works ok for a while, but if you run post-catalyzed material through yer system, it wont work forever-in my experience. (I could be wrong here!, but the stuff will harden even if you leave the hose full of reducer {aka “highgrade laquer thinner}) And if you mix materials, like I did, some kinda debris accumulation or debris percipitation is a certainty, don’t ya agree?
If you’ve encountered this, you can appreciate my dillema. I figured out what seem to me to be easy and simple solutions long ago, and I got my own solution to this quandry, I’m looking for simpler solutions which I has overlooked.
My solution in the past has been to soften the debris in the hose by leaving the reducer in it, it will soften da*n near any finish, and then use a 22-cal gun cleaner brush to scour out what I can from either end, and then take a length of 14 gauge copper wire and attach the brush to it, and feed it through the hose, pull the brush through, run solvent through it, pull the brush through again and again, follwed with a rag wipe in the same 22cal system, then make a “not too big or not too small wad of paper towel, and force it through with air pressure, attach the hose back up to the (cleaned) pressure pot,) and run clean solvent throught it til it runs clear.
Any finishing illuminati able to send this ignormus on a purer and simpler path towards achieving a clean solution with less time spent?
Eric,
in cowtown
Edited 4/4/2006 1:10 am ET by cowtown
Replies
Maybe buy a new hose? Figure your time and material used to clean out the hose and compare to the cost of some new hose and some fittings. Your choise should be clear.
Is this something that you have to do often?
I hear where yer coming from. No problem is insurmountable if you can throw enuf bucks at it. No, I don't have to do it often, but the solvent resistant pressure hoses typically run 50-80 bucks Cdn$ depending on length. What do you pay for yer hoses? Maybe I is getting hosed??? Given that the time taken to clean it roughly equates to the time spent driving to the supplier and back, and that ya gotta have solvents and brushes out to clean the gun anyway, I dunno if the choice is as clear as you imply. OTOH, maybe I gotta shop around with other suppliers. I was lookin for input from folks on hose cleaning methodologies...But maybe I'm the only one stupid enuf to do it. Thanks for the reply...Eric
no prob...I worked for a finisher for a spell a while back, and I've never heard of having to physically clean out the hoses (not saying that the guy I worked for had never had to in the past), but also we were spraying almost exclusively either a vinyl sealer or NC lacquer. If there was a client that wanted an "exotic" finish, i.e. cat or pre-cat or other hard to clean-up-after finishes, we'd use a cup gun instead of a pressure pot. It was a bit more of a hassle due to the weight of the gun, but seams like it would be less to clean up in the end.
thanks. I duuno if it's the volume of material I'm spraying these days, or whether it's my own obsessive compulsiveness to come up with good and better finishes, but it keeps me perpetually upgrading finishing equipment. I hope I am coming to the end of the tunnel, but it has been a long row to hoe, and it ain't been a cheap process. To be honest, but not intending any slight in the least (you was the only fella to respond so far) if yer were paying for the tools, that would let you take a different perspective on the question.I do do my own air hoses,((it's amazing what them pex plumbing crimp connections will fit!!) so I intrinisicly understood you suggestion for new hose, but by the same token, I've experienced chemical reactions from "discount" hoses which caused material to coagulate in the hose overnight. (That's how I figured out how to clean hoses.....out of sheer desperation) Now I only buy hoses from folks who are in the business of selling finishing products. They got too much reputation to lose if they sell crappy junk. I know it costs me more. When I described the situation to my laquer and binks tool supplier, their first reaction was "what did you expect?" and the second was "wanna buy a good hose?" I once took off the cap from one of the pressure pot guns to clean it, and hooked the hose with my foot. The (two week old) unprotected block and needle hit the floor. Cost me a hunnerd bucks for that mistake. (and believe me I tried to make it work again...) Thank god it wasn't a home Despot spray gun. I got a new block and needle same day from my supplier. They politely chuckled on hearing my woefull tale; not in any malevolent or nasty fashion, but rather in a way that said " yer one step further on the learning curve fella....."Given the number of "finishing experts" that tauntonian publications have seen fit to publish over about 50 issue years, I figurated that for sure, at least one of em has been there and done that. Congrats grainwise, you is the only one so far. And I thank you. Eric
in Cowtown
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