What Airless Spray Tip Is Right For You? What Do The Numbers Mean?

[Music] all in this lesson I'm going to be talking about airless spray tips so we are using airless sprayers to apply paint you know to um our exteriors cuz we can paint faster and more efficent patient you know with an heirless spray so heirless sprayers use tips what size tips do I use when it comes to painting next next year now I've gone um through a wide variety of tips you know over my uh career experimented with different tips different sizes different fan widths different orifice sizes and eventually came down to two tips that I use on every exterior and this is the only two tips I typically ever use a 515 tip for um the body uh garage doors man doors overspray is a big topic you know uh that people are uh you know really concerned about it's a big liability one way to control overspray is by the tip you use and a 515 is um a great tip it's a good overall size also so if if you don't understand tip sizing you take the first number so we got 515 you got a five and then a one and a five the first number doubled at 12 in from the surface is going to be your fan width five m multiply by two and you got 10 in so uh 12 in from the surface you're going to have a 10in fan width now the second two digits of the tip size is the orifice size so how big is the hole that the paint is actually going through in the tip and the orifice um is that that number itself you know is a represent a rep representation of the size in I'm not sure we'll have we'll look it up in millimeters or decimeters I don't know it's one of those numbers like a 550 the orice size is a 15 a 1221 the orice size is a 21 a 21 is significantly bigger than a uh a 15 a 310 the Orit size is A10 and so it's significantly smaller than a 515 you there's times when you don't want a ton of paint going onto the surface because it might run due to the product that you're using you'll drop down in an orvus size so you can control the overspray by the fan width you can also control overspray and um lost product by the orifice size for quite a few years I used a 619 and the 619 is going to give you a big fan a bigger fan width and it's going to be a bigger oversiz so it's going to throw out more pain if you feel like you're going too slow with a 515 you want to speed it up uh going to a 619 is going to give you the ability to go faster you know eventually I came to you know the speed that I need to go with a 515 the overlap I need to go with a 515 and it worked really well it's a great tip to teach teach new people to use also on exteriors when it came to new construction exteriors we actually were even using 122s cuz you you don't you're not concerned about overspray cuz it's just dirt everywhere most of the houses aren't even painted there's um no people living in the houses it's new construction and so you can actually paint extremely fast you know with a 1221 but we're talking you know actually repaints um a lot of liability with overspray with um close by neighbors you know um vehicle um in the neighborhood and stuff like that so 515 you know to me is um my recommended tip size for doing next year repaints for the body garage M doors Etc now I'll talk about a 310 a 310 tip is what I use to paint a front door and what I paint uh use paint gutters 70% of the houses have gutters on them uh they are powdercoated finishes uh kind of like a front door a front door is typically a metal front door and we want a smooth um you know glasslike finish on front door you get better atomization you get better control with a uh 310 and a better finish in the end we're typically using a 310 fine finish tip and a fine finish tip is going to atomize the paint on the droplets the paint smaller it's going to lay it out better it's not going to lay it out so heavy that it's going to take a long time for it to dry a 310 is a good width a good fan width it covers you know one pass um the face of the gutter one pass the bottom of the gutter a 310 you know it's a 6in fan width and 310 is great for spraying the front doors you got you got to spray the edges typically um sometimes the bottom and the top and you're not going to have a lot of overspray with a 310 uh sometimes we're using a 310 to do the down spouts also a lot of times I don't even change I'm on I got a 515 I just use the 515 for the down spouts but you will get a lot of overspray you know if you're spraying them in Grass if you're spraying them on on the driveway definitely want to have drop floth but if you're concerned about overspray uh spray your down spouts with a 310 also those are the two tip size a 515 and a 310 is typically uh you know what I use I want to talk about haa tips so they're high efficiency airless tips uh by Titan they run at low pressures um 800 to 1100 PSI and from my um testing and experimenting you know on an exterior the droplets are a lot bigger with an ha tip so you you what um I found you know if you're over walkways driveways Etc or you're spraying like sofits overhead you're getting a lot more um wet overspray Fallout so you're going to be getting your know wet paint falling in your face if it's not flash drying before it hits the ground because the droplets are too um too big you're going to get wet overspray landing on um driveways sidewalks Etc stuff like that haa tips are great tips uh for interior painting where I I don't think where you don't have to worry about overspray they do give a really nice um good feathered fan on it uh versus production tips that give kind of more of a sharp edge I do like them for um interior painting especially for uh ceilings I'll talk about Graco rack X LP tips they're low press tips kind of like a version of an haa tip a lot of these manufacturers of heirless tips are going to low pressure because of people's fear for overspray I don't think they really like resolve the problem by going to low pressure reducing overspray because once again LP tips same thing they have um a bigger droplet the bigger droplet is more likely going to fall onto you know what you don't want to get wet paint on and cause you know issues cleanup issues liability issues The Rock X the lp tips that are fine finish tips so like if you're using a 310 from my experimenting they come come out uh to egg Shelly of a finish and so they don't come out like really glassy the atomization is not breaking up the the the paints the the droplets of paint fine enough to give you a really fine finish I just thought it just looked too egg Shelly I steer away from ha tips rack X LP tips or rack tips Graco tips on the exterior of a house I do um have a recommendation when it comes to a fine finish tip you know fine finish tips I think um trch noways um I think in the past Graco was kind of like the leader you know in um the tip industry and making you know good quality tips and the best fine finish tips I think eventually um they kind of ruined that by going low pressure you know in my opinion um Titan um started making better production tips and better you know fight and finish tips and then I think um trch eventually came out with a new fine finish tip that is kind of like leading the industry in my opinion when it comes to fine finishes so if you're after fine finish when it comes to cabinets um front and front doors on the next year you want to um give trch a try Bedford tips is a manufacturer you know um and they're not you know one of the the big major names everybody knows about but Bedford you know manufacturers sprayer parts and they recently got into um manufacturing uh airless sprayer tips and guns and I've tested their tips their parts their uh repacking kits and and parts for airless sprayers are um just as good if not better than OEM uh parts and I feel like the the tips do last as long create a great finish and one thing about Bedford is they're cheaper and they're actually significantly cheaper so you know a lot of people kind of steer away from them because they don't they've never heard the name but I tested them I like them I use them uh they work in a standard Titan guard Bedford guard or trch guard they won't work in a rack X guard they do make uh fine finish tips and they make production tips I wouldn't say I'm not a fan but I don't use their fine finish tips by use their production tips and it is um a recommendation for you if if um you spending uh you money on tips is something that really you know hits your pocketbook you know pretty heavily cuz they're not cheap I'll just hit it like really quick you know how long does a tip last you'll find finish tips about 20 gallons and the tip in orici size are blown out your production tips on average almost all production tips about 60 to 80 gallons you know they're worn out and blown out what does that mean the Orit size actually is as soon as you start spraying uh paint through an airless tip uh there's you know Clays and um fillers in all paints that act as abrasive like a sandpaper they start sanding basically the orice size you know um of an airless tip and enlarging the Orit SI making it bigger and uh changing the pattern so an heiress tip typically has like an oval spray pattern as the Orit size gets larger that oval um starts to turn circular then your droplets of paint get large a lot larger and um they're not atomized as well and the pattern begins to change and that happens pretty rapidly you know with uh uh tips one major manufacturer that I um you know spoke to they tested all the tips across the board and one of the studies showed that even with theirs um like a 517 tip within uh 20 gallons was uh blown to a 517 tip So within 20 gallons it already changed a whole tip size Orvis wise and then then that kind of like um the curve started to you know fall off from there and it didn't wear the tip out as fast as the first 20 gallons but you got to know it does change so if you're concerned about overspray using blown out tips you're going to have a lot of overspray you're going to have a lot of Fallout so don't use the tips longer than you should you know if you're concerned about overspray