HVLP Spray Gun Basics- How To setup

Hi, I'm Tom and today I'm going to show you how to paint with an HVLP gun. We'll start with a teardown going over the basic controls and then I'll show you demonstrations of painting techniques. here we have your cup your nozzle this is your fan control below your fan control is your paint volume control this is your air volume control this is your air inlet your trigger and here are your coupling screws your needle your fan control these are the parts you're going to want to take apart when you clean your gun. These guns are from Harbor Freight.

This cup. This is the automotive kit. Comes with two guns. He left in a smaller one. IRA Freight has some good equipment and some bad equipment. Really like these guns, this is a needle, these guns come with a 1.4 and a 1.8 needle and these also match, so you change the needle, you change this, you use a 1.8 for banks thicker ones and you use the 1.4 for thinner roses, so that's pretty much the breakdown as far as cleaning it, let's give it a good scrub and make sure the needle is clean, all these ports are open, especially these ports here open Yes, one of the things I like about these guns compared to some of the other Harbor Freight guns is that all the metal to metal seals seal very well and the seals don't wear out.

Hey, cool, this is your fan control, so it controls how wide your pattern is. It is completely closed. You get a circular pattern if it is completely open. wide fan, this allows the amount of paint to come out the further out, the more paint comes out when you first pull the trigger, just the air flows keep pulling on the inlet loops, so what happens when we are

spray

ing? We have paint, it comes in here, air comes. here they mix in the nozzle and they fly out of the gun and they come out of the gun they come out as little drops flying through the air those drops eventually hit your part they form little drops of your part so we're going to be drops eventually Level and connect, hopefully you're going to get a nice clean surface, so there's a few things going on here.

The size of the droplet is quite important. It actually leaves here. It is a fog that does not see the drops. The higher the pressure, the smaller the droplets. This can be a good or bad thing, it depends on the paint, so the smaller the droplets, the fire texture here, but also the drier it will remain, as these little droplets fly through the air and also evaporate a bit. solvent, so in paint we have solids and solvents, what happens is that the solvents bring the sauce to the surface and eventually evaporate and leave behind solids. This is true for both two part paints and single part water based paints, so with this as they dry also the distance between here and here increases these are drier as they go there now a Sometimes we want to dry because if it's wet it will sink if it's too dry you'll get a lot of texture so you have to find the middle ground.

The first thing you always want to do is strain the paint. You can use a disposable filter like this one. You could have been a yellow part of the spring stores or you can do it. I usually do it, which is a funnel and a small screen. get them from mcmaster-carr filter paint with no little bits of snot in there otherwise it would end up on your finish or clog your gun which is really annoying ok here we are in the paint booth like i mentioned before all three Main controls are inlet pressure. Paint volume and fan control.

Let's start with the pressure. I'm going to show you that you have the gun set up and very low pressure right now. I'm going to show you what that does and why it's not good. Do a quick review here. okay, I hope you can see that, but I'll zoom in, you can see specks everywhere, they're never going to give you a good painter, okay, yeah, turned up to 60 psi, that's on the high side and then I'm going to move on. By blowing the ball into place you can see there are flaws everywhere, it actually gives you a pretty good finish but you're going to waste a lot of paint because it's blowing everywhere and now I have about 35 psi, not much excess

spray

ing, good coverage. what I'm looking for, so if your dots are too big, be doctor, too big, your pressures are too low, if you're spraying a lot, a lot of fog, I mean the pressure is too high, okay, next I'm going to pass above the fan the fan control is the top one this is your side air here your nozzles this way it means your fan will be up and down depending on what you're painting you can change it now your fans will be on the side we're going to put the fans up and down and turn this all the way basically down the line, okay, giving you dots all the way to get a wide pattern like that, okay, so that's your fan control that depends on what If you're painting very small parts, you'll want a slightly tighter pattern.

I always like to have a little side air. If you're painting a large panel, you'll want a wider pattern. you can be okay, the last one is a volume of paint, that's what's down here, this allows your needle to come back and allows the paint to come out, the more you unscrew it, the further the needle can come out, the pinker, it can come out one thing to note that when you first pull the trigger it's just there, there's no paint, you keep pulling, you start to feel pain, so a very low volume of paint goes down even further, see, just put the real thing in luminosity there you probably don't want to do that.

Unless you're looking for the fact that overspray is going to make extremes, here we go all the way. I've got a lot of stuff coming out here, okay, if you're doing panels, you gotta keep the gun moving. You'll probably want to go a little less, it gives you a little more control, it's always easier to add paint than it is to take away the pain, if you go too heavy it will smear, so I'd like to start at the bottom and work your way back. and feel it, you can see it's light, the second coat is coming, I can catch it right away, so that's the

basics

, fan paint volume, air pressure, stay tuned, we'll do another video on painting techniques and fixing issues.