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Yes, you can use your turbine for art....

PostPosted: Thu Aug 04, 2022 10:18 pm
by DarrelK
Some of you might have followed along over the project area on here as I hand laid up a wing for my Smyth Dodge Charger. So the wing has had a year and a half of driving, trips, shows, etc. When I intially built it the epoxy resins that I was using actually in the Kevlar/Carbon Fiber cloths made no pretense to have any UV protection. The later poured on epoxies I switched to did have UV inhibitors. Long story short..... I got an internal blush/haze down low in the fibers almost whiting out the colors. Okay, so there has been no external peeling, splitting, cracking, or even movement with the wing. The color fade is down inside.
So when I first built this piece I had considered doing True Fire or Real Fire graphics with it. Here was an opportunity..... I scuffed up the existing matte clear well at 400, hit it with some anti-stat, and proceeded to put on Tamco Jet Black as a background color. I next mixed up the same Paint with Pearl bi-flop pearl that I used originally on my truck with Tamco Intercoat Clear. Using some Chuck Bauman Stencil patterns I made my own shapes out of projector film. I had my 6 stage portable unit with my Sprayfine gravity gun, set the output down to about level of a 3 or 4 stage output and began to hold the stencils as I misted just past them with the pearl.
Take a look at the pic.s. I think that this illustrates that you can really control how the pearls hit the surface for your highlights, in some ways maybe even better than a mini gun or airbrush. My theory has always been that since you are spraying through a larger gun tip (1.3 here) that the pearls are orienting themselves differently and broadcasting better. Also, the lower pressure of the turbines allow for less bouncing around of the colors.

Re: Yes, you can use your turbine for art....

PostPosted: Tue Aug 09, 2022 8:49 pm
by 67Drop
Very cool DarrelK. Thanks for sharing. I've been wondering just how much we can do with Turbine systems but there is not a whole lot of information out.

DarrelK wrote:I had my 6 stage portable unit with my Sprayfine gravity gun, set the output down to about level of a 3 or 4 stage output,, .


How did you turn down the output? Did you turn it down at the valve, have it wired for 2 speed, or using a rheostat?

Re: Yes, you can use your turbine for art....

PostPosted: Tue Aug 09, 2022 11:20 pm
by DarrelK
On mine I use the simple inline air valve to back it off. If you have a 2 speed model like most of the 6 stage units you could also just put it down to the lower speed which emulates a 4 stage. Personally I just like the air valve for it's simplicity and ability to be further choked down to more like a 3 stage output. A rheostate would easily acomplish the same thing and also put less back pressure on the turbine blades......
Oh, and also did not mention that I always move my fan pattern click stop to diagonal for a round pattern for this. With adjustment of air flow you should be able to turn your pattern down to just slightly less than the size of a pencil eraser.....