All About Airless Paint Sprayer Tips

This is Chris the Idaho Painter. In this video, I'm going to talk about airless tip sizes and um answer some of the questions that I've been getting a lot of on my YouTube channel. What tip sizes do I use? I'm going to try to answer some of these questions and discuss what the tip sizes mean and what it looks like. I'm going to spray some of the different tip sizes right here on my shed that I just painted recently to give you an idea what it looks like to use a 310 versus say a 1221. So, I'm going to talk a little bit about these tips and I'm going to talk about the tip sizing right now a little bit. And tip sizing, when somebody asks me what tip size I use to spray trim, I'm going to tell them a 310 tip is the most common tip size. And the tip size, what the numbers mean, if you want to know what they mean, a three, the first number on a tip size, if you double that number, that's going to be the fan width, how wide the fan is. If you have your gun tip uh 12 in from the surface. So if I tell you I'm using a 310 tip, you take the first number, you double it, and that's going to be six. So my width of my fan is going to be 6 in. And then the second number, the 10, is going to be the orifice size. So that's going to describe kind of how much paint is going to come out of the tip. So if I'm using a 1223 tip, I'm going to take that first number, which is a 12. I'm going to double that. And so my fan width is going to be 24. And my second number, the 23, is the orifice size. So a 23 is a lot larger than a 10. The larger number on the orifice size, the more product is going to come out. And so a 310 is going to put a really fine finish on here. If I jump up to a 123 1223, it's going to throw a ton of paint in a wide fan. And so that's for spraying uh for instance new construction jobs or block fillers and you're trying to go really fast and just paint really fast. But if you're a new sprayer, a beginner uh from with spraying airless sprayers, the larger the tip size, the harder it is going to spray. I do get questions too if um on tips when it comes to the guard itself and the tip itself. This right here, this is a uh contractor 2 gun. I can take and put a um Titan tip and a Titan guard on this gun and run it. Vice versa, if I had a Titan gun and I wanted to run Graco guards and Graco guns, you can do that. The threads on these uh guards right here are universal. So, the threads on this guard will go on any airless sprayer gun that I've ever used. So, I can't speak to that worldwide, but typically all these the threads are universal. So, if I wanted to uh screw a Titan tip and guard on here, I can do so. So, hopefully that answers, you know, the question I keep getting, can I use different tips and guards? If you have a, for instance, this blue guard, this is a Graco guard. If I have a Graco guard, I cannot use Titan tips with the Graco Guard. And even within Graco, Graco has their regular rack tips and um then their rack X tips. And so the blue the blue guard you can't use a black tip with the blue guard even though it's from Graco. So the the the style of tip and the guard go together but can go on multiple guns. And there's a wide vray of tip sizes from uh ones all the way up to I've used them as large as 1235s. I've used a 108 all the way to a 1235. So, a 108 is going to give you a a 2-in fan with very a very fine spray coming out of it. There's another thing you'll see a lot of, and don't have one on me. I think there's uh is green tips. There's uh within the Graco family of tips, you're going to see blue tips, which are the Rackex tips. You'll see black tips, you'll see green tips, and the green tips are fine finish tips. And with airless sprayers, you can get a really fine finish for doing lacquers and interior trim paint by using the fine finish tips. The blue tips will give you a really a good quality finish, but won't give you a really fine finish like the green the green tips will. I do have a tip I'm going to be spraying with right here. It's a white tip from Graco. They do have their new FFLP tips and their fine finish low pressure tips. the old generation trips tips, the fine finish tips are no going to be no longer in existence. They don't make them anymore. They're going to the the LP tips, which means low pressure. And why that's important, their handheld guns now, the Graco Ultra handhelds use uh uh use lower pressure. So, they need tips that run at low pressures. and their new tips will run at low pressures and can go into a regular airless sprayer or can go into the handheld sprayers. And in a regular airless sprayer, these new FFLB tips and even the handhelds have less overspray with them. So, it's really uh it's convenient to have less overspray and not have have enough mess. But the white one, this is their uh these are test tips. So, Graco sent me a bunch of them to test. These were the FFLP uh test tips. You're not going to see them white, you're going to see them green now. So, I'm going to get spraying with some of the tips. I got uh I got a way a wide variety of wide array of tips. I'm going to be shooting uh a 12 fan up here. I'm going to shoot a 3 in uh 3 fan, which is 6 in. I'll shoot a 24, a 6, and then I'm going to shoot a 515. I use uh a 515 for doing exteriors. I use a 310 for doing interior trim work. And if I'm doing new construction or say a large uh tiltup or block building, I'm going to use or using um uh Elastics, I'm going to use a 12 in tip. So, I'll use like a 1221. Uh occasionally when spraying interiors, if I'm just doing a rental or something like that, I'll have a 619. But those are the most common tips I have. So, in all my vehicles, I stock 310s. I stock 515s cuz we spray all of our exteriors with 515s. I keep if I'm doing new construction, I always keep 12 21s in my tip in my vans. And then I also keep 619s in there. So, those are the the four most common tips that I use. Occasionally, we might need something else out. There's a whole array of tips, but we'll just run up to our paint store and grab something different if we got something uh different to do, but I use on exteriors 310 to do my gutters. Uh 515s to spray the body uh um stucco and shake stuff like that. If I'm doing fences, I use a 515. If I'm doing uh interior trim work on a house, I use 310s. If I'm doing interior trim, doing new construction, I use a 510 cuz you got a lot of doors to spray and it's faster to spray doors with a 510. Um uh and if I'm doing new construction walls and I'm the whole house, I'm going to be using a 1221 or 1223. So, that's uh a little bit about the tips I'm using. Hopefully, that answers the bunch of questions. Now, let's show you what it looks like to use some of them right now. So, now we're going to start spraying some of these tip sizes on here. I'll tell you what one I'm going to spray. We'll discuss them. All these tips and the products I use, the guns I use, um the sprayers I use, all that's available in my tool store or in the video description below. You can check out the video description on all my videos. I always try to throw the stuff down in there of the stuff I use and and like to use and trust using. Also on my website the ididahoepainter.com you can find my tool store where you can buy all that stuff too. Um if you haven't seen my live show, go check out my live show every Monday at 7 PM. Monday 7:00 p.m. Mountain time USA time. I give away a lot of products on my live show um in the middle of the show and the end of the show. So you got to go check it out. Also, I got a giveaway page on my website the idaho.com where my tool store is at. Giving away a a sprayer. Gave away a sprayer last week at Graco Ultra Handheld. So, go check out my website and um check that stuff out so you can um enter my free giveaways. I'm also on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and even Instagram, so you can check out what I'm doing outside of painting and making videos or even get some tips and tricks on those social media sites of mine that aren't even in my videos. But now, let's get um going. I'm going to start off with using a 310 tip. And a 310 tip is going to give you a first number, you double it, it's going to give you a 6-in fan. And then the the orphice size is a 10. So it's going to give you a fine finish or the numbers really low. The the lowest numbers I'd use is eights. And those are going to give you a really really fine finish. But I'll spray it on here. And to get the actual pattern that um is described, the first number doubled. This uh tip right here has got to be 12 in away from your surface. And that if you measured it, that should give you your um width. and a little bit about I'll probably try to use some old ones and new ones so you can see what it's like to get a tip that's blown out and worn out cuz these tips don't last forever on an exterior. We're typically running about I don't know about 40 to 50 gallons through a 515 tip before the orifice starts to get blown out. It starts to throw out too much paint and you start to get too much overspray with it. you'll start to hear it hiss and make a different sound and then you'll see um the fan and stuff. The patterns doesn't come out nice and even. You'll start to get fingering and stuff like that. So, if you um are wondering why you're getting fingering, that could be an issue with the pressure. You don't got enough pressure or your filters are clogged or your tip is blown out and worn out. So, you definitely want to check out um if you're getting fingering issues, your fan's not looking right, you know, check those issues out. So, I'm going to stick on a 310 and then show you what it looks like. So, the first tip I got on here is a I put a 310 on here. So, we're going to shoot this fine finish. This is um this is the FFT. So, this is a fine finish tip. This is not an LP tip. So, this is one of the old generation tips that you won't find anymore. I got an extension on here. Um if you're curious why I got an extension, I got a bunch of videos on using extensions. So, you can go check those out of why I use them and how to not get spits or deal with spits with using extensions. But that's a different topic that I'll go into a little dep in depth later. But here's a 310 tips. I'll try to get this thing about 12 in and we'll show you what it looks like. My pressure on my sprayer when I'm spraying exteriors and um most of the spraying I do, I run it at 2200 PSI. If I'm doing fine finish trim work, I bump it up to about 3,000 PSI. But I'll shoot this. I haven't even done a test yet. So, we'll see what it looks like. So, the you can see we've got um it doesn't look really good. We got some fingerings, some pattern, and I can tell right now just by um I had it set up to do a um FF LP tip a little bit earlier. So, I'm going to turn my pressure up. Get that pressure crank up. So now we'll see what it looks like with more uh proper pressure. So there you go. It looks a lot better. It's not all blotchy, uneven. Don't add my fingers on there. So try it one more time right here. So there you go. And that's probably will measure out close to 6 in. And that's a fine finish tip. You a fine finish 310 tip. So now I'm going to switch out, take my 310 tip off, and I'm going to put on a I got a 515. So the 515, that's going to be a 10-in fan. Double the first number. So the width is going to be 10 in. The orifice size is bigger. So now we went from a 10 to a 15. So it's going to put out um quite a bit more paint. So you can uh get th more mill thickness, put paint on faster, and move a lot faster. So, I'll spray it uh right up against next to this was your 310. Now, here we go with our 515. [Music] So, you can see there's the difference between a six and a 10. And it put on a lot heavier of a coat. Go right down here. Do it again. [Music] There's a 515. 515. And the pressure. I got my pressure. I left it. It um it's about 2,800 PSI is what I shot that at. It's really hard to tell exactly on uh some of the pumps cuz they don't have digital readouts. That's one of the nice things about having a digital readout on your airless sprayers. You know exactly what pressure you're running at. So, if I give you a recommendation that to spray your trim work at uh 3,000 PSI or spray your body at 2200, um it's easier to tell. with this. Uh we know cuz all the experience we know about where to turn our dial on up on these pumps to get the proper PSI, but you just got to play with it just to um if you're getting fingering and stuff like that, just turn the dial up a little bit more until it goes away. So now I got a tip right here. This is a 623 and we were uh painting some elastime coatings with it and some block walls that was peeling and this sprayed uh several hundred gallons and this tip is what we call all blown out and worn out now. And you're going to see what happens with a tip that's really blown out. So this is a 623. So it's a um 6-in fan or it's a 12-in fan. The orphice size is quite a bit bigger than this was right here, this 515. But this thing is blown out. So, the orphice size is even bigger. So, you're going to see what happens with this tip. Now, [Music] I don't know if you can hear the difference, but the hissing was extremely extremely loud and it just threw on a ton of paint right there. So, when you got a tip that's blown out, it's the the particles. It's not going to atomize the paint as well. It's not going to give you a really fine finish, but it'll just blow on paint like really really fast. So, if you're doing, you know, some stuckco where you're back rolling it and stuff like that, you just want to get a lot of paint on there, it's okay to use these worn out tips. That's one one case we've um we use them, but you can hear the sound of it. It hisses really really loud. It doesn't give you that nice um fine hiss that's really smooth and light. So, we got our 515 right here. This was our 623. So, you can see it's just a couple couple inches uh wider. This was our 310 right here. here. This one uh not enough pressure right here. Bumped up the pressure. You sprayed these two right here. That's a 515 right there. Now we're going to bump up to a 1221. We're going to show you what that looks like. So now I'm going to be sticking a Let's see. I got a 1223 tip on here. So when it comes to these tips too, I'll just go over this really fast. They don't last forever. And uh what makes a tip wear out, you know, is the paint going through it. Cheaper paints wear these tips out a lot faster because the cheap quality quality clays and fillers that they put in those paints. It's going to make them wear out a little a little faster, but or a lot faster. I I use from my experience, we use high-end um exterior paints and interior paints. And on exteriors once I think I said it before, we go through probably 40 to 50 gallons before this thing is worn out. And it's just some experience. You know, you begin to learn to hear the difference when the tip gets blown out. You'll hear the sound of it is different. It's louder. You start to feel more overspray in the air getting on you, falling off on you if they're blown out. Typically, if a tip is not blown out at all, you're not you're not sending out any overspray at all. But, um, just keep an eye on your tips. They don't last forever. Like I said, we've tried to replace them, you know, every 40 to 50 gallons or so. Um, but it's really just, um, by, you know, sound. you'll start to see it doesn't put out a quality finish either. So, here goes a 1223. Get this thing about 12 in from our surface. So, that's a 1223 right there. You can see uh how big of a fan that thing puts out right there. I'll shoot it over here once again if you can see that. Let me turn this. I think you can still see me. So, I'll go right here. Uh 12 123. This is putting out a ton of paint. [Music] So you can see that that's a 1223 right here. This is a 515. So you can see how much faster you can paint when it comes to new construction interiors. I can paint a new construction interior really, really fast. But you got to have a lot of experience to use tip sizes that big cuz it's blowing out so much paint so fast. And one of the things you end up getting is you'll get um lap marks. You'll get uh um start and stop marks. It'll just be really heavy. So you'll come up and turn back to go to your opposite direction. You're going to get a big heavy mark that could run really easily. And um so you just got to have some experience when you start jumping up to these large tips. For a beginner, I would say on an exterior, uh even though we we use 515s, um on exteriors, uh using a 515 would be a good option for a beginner. On exteriors, you can bump up to if you want to move a lot faster, bump up to like a 621 if you're confident. But there's a little bit about tip sizing. Um I think I've gone over everything. If you got any questions or comments when it comes to anything I haven't discussed here or anything I have discussed, please leave them in the comments section below. I answer all my questions and comments on