Overspray, How To Stop Before It Strikes

This is Chris, the Idaho painter, here on Paint Life TV. Today, we're going to talk about overspray. It's one of our most popular subjects, so we're going to give you some cool tips and tricks on how to control overspray. This is a two-part video series. This is part one. Stay tuned for another video that's going to be part two. I got a special guest with me today. It's Darren. He's from Airlift Discounters over in Berlin, Germany. They're one of the largest distributors of Airlift spray equipment in all of Europe. So, they got some really cool information to share with you. So, stay tuned. Hopefully you enjoy Darren's South African accent just as much as I do. So take it over, Darren. Here we go. Welcome to another episode of the AIS Discounter video series. My name is Darren and in today's video we're going to be looking at a very common issue faced by painters and decorators when using the AIS spraying equipment and that is overspray. Now what is overspray? Firstly, well, when you spraying a room and you see a mist developing in the room, that is overspray. Don't breathe that stuff in. It's not going to be very good for you. And unfortunately, with overspray, it means that we are wasting materials when it should be going onto the surface. So, how can we reduce overspray? Well, there's three areas to look at. The first is the spraying technique. That's how you're holding the gun in relation to the surface and the spraying action. The second is the spraying pressure and the third is the spraying tip. So, let's talk about the uh spraying technique that you have. Firstly, well, for a lot of you experienced painters out there, you know this very well, but I'm going to review it quickly. You would start by holding the spray gun about 25 cm from the surface. That's roughly one ruler's length and a little bit less. Next, you want to make sure that the gun is perpendicular to the surface. So, if you can imagine the the camera is the wall, you're holding it perpendicular and you're moving the sprayer, keeping it against the wall like so. When you pull the trigger, you want to make sure that you are pulling the trigger and making the movement at the same time. If you had to just hold down the trigger and keep the spray, keep the gun in one place, you would find a buildup of paint in that area. Once you start needing to cover a wider area, make sure you move your feet because if you keep your feet planted and you start moving the gun out, the paint is going to spread. It's going to feather and more of it's going to go into the air and less on the surface. So, think of yourself more as a dancer or when you're doing mountain climbing. You got to make sure you use your feet to cover a wider area. The second area we're going to look at is the uh pressure. Now, you might uh just want to keep it on uh the lowest pressure on on the highest pressure, but you're being a bit lazy. I mean, if the pressure is too low, you're not getting that contact onto the surface. And if the pressure is too high, why well it might not be right for the material you're using and you're going to get a lot of overspray. Related to the pressure, there are four other considerations and that is the material you are using, the delivery rate of the machine itself, the uh nozzle or spray tip that you're using and uh the temperature of the material. So how do you find the right pressure? Well, in order to do that, I've got my colleague here where we're going to do a demonstration to find that sweet spot of pressure that you'll need for the job. So, this is what it looks like. We have a lot of material here on the edges and in the middle there is clearly not enough material. The finish here is evidently not uniform and the spray pattern leaves room for improvement. Let's go now to the 220 bar. Here the spray pattern is clearly more uniform, but it is evident there is way too much material on the surface. And of course, we are also getting this rather annoying overspray. So, how do we find the optimal pressure? Well, we're going to start on a lower pressure setting and then we're going to move up in increments of 20 to 30 bar until we find the right uniform spray that we need. So let's begin with 100 bar. We see the same pattern as before. There is too much material on the edges and too little material in the central area. We need to raise the pressure. At 130 bar, the finish is better. Certainly more uniform, but there's still a little bit of room for improvement. Let's try 160 bar. Good finish. uniform spray pattern, not too much material, not too much overspray, and we are 60 bar below the maximum potential of the machine. If you're new to to uh Ellis spraying, you might want to consider practicing with water first. This technique of starting at a lower pressure and then making small incremental increases in pressure until you find the right uniform spray pattern that you're happy with. Number three, let's look at the spray tip. So you look at the job that you have, you look at the material that you're using and you have to decide what spray tip to use. Well, you can look at the technical data sheet to help you. But these are some other considerations. Well, the spray tip has three digits on it. The first digit tells you the angle and the last two digits tells you the size of the ball hole on the tip. Let's look at the angle first. The first digit lets you know the spray angle. So for instance, if you had a 515 tip, the digit five is telling you the angle. You work it out by taking the number five and adding a zero. A 515 tip is a 50° spray angle. So for a spray uh a spray tip starting with a two or a three, you would have two, add a zero to make a 20°, three, add a zero at the end for 30°. And that gives you the spray angle that you're working with. You'd also, this lets you know uh the actual uh fan of paint that's being delivered. In this case, you would take uh the first digit and you would double it. So three becomes six. And you would also add the zero and 60 is 60 uh cm. So you would get an idea of the angle of the spray and then also how much is actually hitting onto the surface that you're working with. When you are spraying small furniture or uh doors, you would want a smaller spray angle. Uh when you're dealing with large surfaces, you naturally want a larger spray angle. Then the material that you're using, thinner materials such as like a lacquer is is going to have a smaller ball hole and your thicker materials are going to use a larger uh ball hole. recent developments in technology. We have tips now that give us a reduced uh overspray. So something like uh the Graco, it brought out the FFLP tip which gives you less overspray. And from uh Wagner, we have the HA tip. Also from Graco, they brought brought out the line laser spray tip, which was customized to work for street markings. And this has also been shown to have less overspray than usual. Overspraying is quite a broad theme, so I'm going to leave that for now in today's video. There are, however, a few more topics that I want to discuss in future videos. This includes using an extension or adding a roller attachment to your gun. Uh, or perhaps what can happen is that with wear and tear, the filter loses its performance and so you'd want to replace that. But we'll look at that in another series. Let us know about uh your issues with overspray. What's the what's the one thing that you wish you hadn't covered with paint? And then also if you have any questions or queries, you can contact us on the details below. Thank you so much for taking your time to watching the video and have a good spray.