Monday, July 23, 2012

Automotive Spray Paint Guns

Automotive spray paint guns can be used for many different things such as painting a wall or your house, but mostly they are used in the automotive industry for car painting.

Automotive spray paint guns can cost as little as 100 dollars, but professional spray paint guns may cost more than 500 dollars, so before you buy it make sure for what kind of purposes you plan to use it. If you might want use it just once, for repainting your car, than better solution would be to go in an auto body shop and let the professionals to do the job. In that case you would spend (if you are looking for ordinary paint job) almost the same amount of money as the average cost of paint job is about from 300 to 500 dollars and you won't lose your time with painting on your own. But in the opposite case, when you plan to do multiple car paint jobs and maybe planning to become a professional amateur painter or even more, than you really should buy a spray gun as it is one of the most important tools for car painting.

For automotive painting beginners perfect gun is high volume, low pressure spray gun, called HVLP in short. It is efficient, less dangerous to your health and less dangerous for the environment in the comparison to others. Next, you will have to choose between siphon-feed and gravity-feed. Siphon-feed spray guns store their paint supply beneath the nozzle while gravity-feed spray guns do just the opposite as they store their paint supply above the nozzle. Gravity feed airbrushes have some advantages over the siphon feed airbrushes as they spray smoother, primarily because they don't rely on air pressure to get paint to the needle. They use almost all the paint, because there is never any left in the bottom of the container and in the end the design makes it easier for us to maneuver in tight places.

When you are choosing a spray gun another important step to do is to choose the tip size. Tips range from about 1.3 mm to 2.0 mm. The larger the tip, the heavier the paint it is designed for. If you are on a budget, you will probably go for a spray gun with a single tip. Then you will have to choose a thing called an air compressor. Take one that meets the requirements of your spray gun. Obviously, you will need to factor in air compressor specs when you are choosing your spray gun. Spray guns are rated by cubic feet per minute (CFM) at a given psi. Choose a gun that does not demand excessive CFM or psi, so you won't have to buy a world-class air compressor just to keep up with it.

This is the majority of things that you have to know when you are choosing a spraying technology for car painting.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Automotive Paint Preparation

Automotive Paint preparation is one of the many important steps of proper repainting of your car. This process involves things such as washing, claying, cutting compounds, waxing and some other important steps. The best way to do this is to follow the procedures which I described in the next few paragraphs.

Sequence of the steps:

1. Wash

2. Clay

3. Cut Compounds

4. Paint Cleaner

5. Mild Abrasive Polishes (swirl removers/fillers)

6. Glazes (oils and fillers only, things like #7)

7. Sealant

8. Waxes

What will these processes do?

I think you all know what washing is, so I won't be describing this process.

What will clay do is that it will remove elements that cannot be dislodged by washing (semi-bonded paint contaminants).

Cutting compounds are rapid surface removing polishes. They are used to remove scratches and blemishes on rough surfaces.

Paint cleaner is going to deep clean the clear coat, like micro-washing. If your paint is in very good condition you could skip cutting compounds process and simply just use a paint cleaner.

Mild abrasive polishes are going to help reduce the appearance of any surface defects that may still be visible (scratches and swirls could not be completely removed). It will "cut" a little bit, but it's mostly for rounding out swirls edges and filling in gaps with fillers. These also usually contain glazing properties to bring back shine.

Glazes are going to do nothing to correct defects, but just add luster and shine through the use of oils.

Sealants are used to lock-in your now perfect finish that the previous steps should have resulted in. There are many kinds of sealants but some are very durable and can help keep your finish very well protected and not evaporate quickly like waxes do. Many sealants also add shine. Remember if you used glazes with oils and fillers that you need to use a sealant that can bond to that type of oily surface. Some sealants cannot bond to anything but a clean surface.

Waxes are also a type of sealant but they tend to evaporate quickly. There are tons of waxes that do very different things. but if you find the right one or combination of waxes to use with your car color then you can add so much more depth and wetness to the look even on top of what your glazes/sealants provided. I prefer to use pinnacle souveran paste and pinnacle carnauba quick shine wax one after the other.