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-Hello, this is Donnie Smith.
And today we're going to talk about paint guns
and paint gun adjustments.
And the different type of paint guns, about what most painters
use in the automotive industry is what's called gravity feed.
And it's the HVLP, which stands for high volume, low pressure.
And what that is, that's where the fluid comes and it's
fed by gravity into the paint gun
and sprayed onto the surface.
This paint gun is one that we use for our waterborne,
spraying the base coat on.
This is probably one of my favorite guns,
and most of the students' favorite guns.
And what it is is Iwata Super Nova.
And it works real well.
And it also works good for clear.
This is a 1.3.
They make another nozzle size, tip size
that is a 1.4 that some painters prefer for clear coat
rather than the 1.3 to get the fluid on there
a little bit heavier.
But I prefer to use the 1.3 for clear as well.
But we're going to talk about a few of the gun adjustments.
The first thing is the air pressure.
And you see I have a gauge right here,
and I can adjust the air pressure right here.
And the problem with this is whenever
you go looking on your technical data sheets,
a lot of times it says the PSI at the air cap.
That's talking about how much pounds is it actually
getting right here.
And I don't see too-- I've seen a couple of guns,
but most guns don't have a gauge up here.
And what's going in is not what's coming out,
so it's going to be different.
So that's why I like to adjust it right here.
And most products, spraying is going
to be somewhere between 18, 25 PSI at the gun.
Now, one other way this could be set is at the wall.
And that's where you adjust it at the wall
and then hood it in.
You don't have this regulator.
But if you do it that way, and some painters
do prefer to do it to a little more accuracy,
but if you do that, you've got to consider
for each foot of hose, there's going to be a drop in pressure.
So you've got to figure that out, determine that out.
What I recommend is just finding out
what the at the gun pressure is.
Use one of these gauges.
It's the most simple way.
And then fine tune it from there.
Because each gun may be a little bit different.
Like if it's a 20 PSI, it may not be the 8 to 10,
or whatever it's supposed to be here.
It's usually about double down here as far as Psi.
So this is 8 to 10.
I'd probably go with 18 to 22 PSI at the gun.
OK.
Talk about the adjustments.
We talked about the air.
Now we're going to talk about the fan pattern.
That's how wide the fan pattern is.
And you usually want a pretty wide fan pattern.
Some painters like to have it open all the way,
but I've found that if you have it too wide open,
it kind of creates a dry overspray,
and you can't really get the achieved effect
that you're wanting.
So I usually open it up all the way,
and turn it about three or four turns, or whatever.
If you spray it and you kind of start seeing it to narrow down,
and it ought to narrow just a little bit more,
that's going for base coat.
Now, clear coat, I don't want it as wide.
I want to narrow it even more so that I get a full wet coat.
Because base coat you don't want on too thick.
You just want a medium wet coat.
And a good, even coat spreads the metallics or the pigment
out.
And then the clear coat, you want
to put that on really nice and thick
to get your mils and all that.
So turned in just a little bit from full width.
Now, if you're painting a little primer spot on a car,
obviously, you're going to narrow that down, you're
going to decrease your fluid your air pressure.
And you'll prime just a little spot.
But for the most part, paint a full panel,
a complete-- that's some general idea of where to adjust it.
Now, this adjusts your fluid here.
And basically all that does is control
how far this needle pulls back.
And you can see as I turn that in, you
can see that that trigger is pushing out.
So it's kind of like a water fountain.
The more you screw it in, the less
you're going to get until you turn it completely off.
And when you open it, it allows the trigger
to go back further, the more fluid you're going to get.
So clockwise is going to decrease,
counter-clockwise is going to increase the fluid.
And the way I usually adjust that is
I pull it all the way back and start screwing it
in until I start feeling the trigger move.
So you have to have it held back to feel that.
I'm feeling it moving.
And then I'll usually turn it about three turns
and see how that sprays.
For clear coat, that's usually a good setting.
Now, base coat, I don't want the full width,
I want a medium width.
So I'm using this for the waterborne base coat.
I'll probably give it a couple more turns.
And then kind of get my test pattern that I'm spraying on
and see how that is.
And then you're going to have to fine tune it from there
to see if that's what you like or not.
If you spray it and you see that it's kind of dry,
you can increase the fluid.
If you spray it and you see that it's just
making runs and the heavy orange peel,
you can decrease the fluid.
So we've talked about the air pressure.
We've talked about the fan pattern.
In some guns, the fan pattern, the fluid's
always going to be right here because it
controls that needle right there.
So it's always going to be right behind the needle.
The fan may come in different areas.
For example, the fan on this gun is over here.
Does the exact same thing.
Notice this one has a cup and this one doesn't.
This is a system set up for the 3M disposable cups.
You just hook that, and when you're done,
you can just take it off.
And it's a lot easier to clean up that way.
This is the system that I really like using.
So we're going to talk about gun techniques just a little bit.
If I could give you one piece of advice,
it's just to be real consistent.
Being a good painter is about being really consistent.
At the factories they have robots
that do the exact same thing every time.
If you can do that, the exact same thing every time,
you'll have it down.
Because the speed and distance-- you
have to adjust the speed with the distance.
And that's going to make a difference.
So if you can think like a robot-- I'm going to do this,
for example.
If you can think like a robot-- and this has to be straight.
You don't want to be like that, because if it is,
it's going to be heavy up here and light down here.
So you can't shoot like that.
Have to be straight.
And you just want to go the same speed every time.
And you don't want to arch either.
Arch is where you kind of lock your wrist
and you go like that.
And it may look in some of the videos you've seen,
that's kind of how painters paint.
But it's not really.
They're keeping it straight.
You have to bend your wrist to keep it straight.
And then to realign with the other panel,
that's where you kind of come out,
but you're actually letting off just to the air.
And by the time it hits the panel right, you pull it again.
Notice that there's really not much straight areas on the car
either.
I mean, this panel, you couldn't just
keep it like this the whole time.
So you've got to kind of follow whatever
contour you're following.
So you've got to keep it straight by bending your wrist.
And you've also got to follow the contours of the car.
So if you keep that in mind, and no arching.
And pull halfway-- and again, I didn't mention this,
but if you pull half way, that shoots just the air.
You're not having any paint.
And that's whenever you adjust your air pressure here
to the 20 PSI or whatever it is.
So get that adjusted.
You always keep that pressed down all the way
wherever you have it set at.
Just air, realign, pull down again.
So you want to keep it straight.
You don't want to arch.
Set just to realign it.
And when you do arch out, you want
to be sure that the trigger is released half way.
And then whenever you line back up with the panel,
that it's pulled back
The other thing you want to concentrate on
is your speed and distance.
Recommend you start with 8 to 10 inches.
That's going to give you more control.
About that speed right there.
So keep about 8 to 10 inches away.
And remember, if you get closer, you're
going to have to move faster.
If you get further away, like you're reaching over,
you don't want nothing to touch.
If you have to get a little further away,
you're going to have to slow down.
So that's just some of the things
you have to get used to, working with the speed
and distance together.
That is kind of hard and confusing at first.
But you kind of get a touch for it,
and you'll develop your own style.
And it becomes second nature to you.
One last thing, like if you are having to reach over something,
if you're short like me, you may have problems reaching
over the hoods and things like that,
sometimes you might have to hold the gun like this.
Or you can hold the gun like that for the most part.
Sometimes you're getting under things,
you can even hold the gun like that.
So three different positions you have to hold the gun.
So that basically covers your paint gun adjustments
and some of your techniques.
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