Hello all,

Let me start out by saying I have no business on this forum. I'm not painting a car, nor do I plan on painting a car. I'm painting speaker grills for a home theater to match wall colour.

I tried spraying them with latex wall paint in an airless and it did a poor job, didn't atomize fine enough and filled the grill holes. So I got CMAX to mix me up a rattle can of waterborne and it worked flawlessly! Then I went back for two more cans and both sprayed out like a shower head....a total of 6 cans later they couldn't make me a can that would spray!

So CMAX made every excuse as to why they can't make a functional rattle can...and finally blamed the weather and gave me a full refund and said they can't help me. They say I need to spray it out of a gun which costs $650 bucks.

So I went to another paint store and they said they don't do rattle cans of waterborne because they are nothing but trouble.

So here I am, grills half painted, the ones that are done look perfect, but I can't get a **** can of paint that will spray. So the only thing separating me from collecting a cheque on this job is these **** grills I gotta paint.

I haven't gone to a paint shop yet but this is such a small stupid project I doubt they would be interested. And painting grills is nothing but an exercise in frustration.

So here's my question, what's the cheapest piece of trash gun that can spray DuPont Waterborne automotive paint?

Thanks!

Uhhhh...I know this may sound obvious.....but did you try taking the tips off the cans that did spray well and put them on the new cans? There can be wide variations in tip construction as well as even model changes in tips. Also were you spraying at the same room temp.s and were the grills the same room temp. as before? Also, you might have tried putting the cans in a sink of hot water to help "thin" the mix more and increase air pressure. They could have been somewhat off on their thinning with the later cans.
Okay, and now....what do you have in the way of a decent compressor to drive a gun that you would buy????? The gun is only part of the equation......

DarrelK wrote:Uhhhh...I know this may sound obvious.....but did you try taking the tips off the cans that did spray well and put them on the new cans? There can be wide variations in tip construction as well as even model changes in tips. Also were you spraying at the same room temp.s and were the grills the same room temp. as before? Also, you might have tried putting the cans in a sink of hot water to help "thin" the mix more and increase air pressure. They could have been somewhat off on their thinning with the later cans.
Okay, and now....what do you have in the way of a decent compressor to drive a gun that you would buy????? The gun is only part of the equation......

Darrell I did exactly that, same result, wasn't the tip. I even went into the paint mixing booth and watched the guy. The second it was ready we sprayed it and same problem. If you want to see the video I can send you a link of it. Personally I think it's the batch of cans they are using...but they basically told me to take a hike.

I've got a modest Emglow compressor, probably a little weak for painting. I use it almost exclusively for blowing lines in conduit.

Cans are just cans....just a simple dip tube, add your mix, one or two mixing balls, propellant and throw on the tip.
What's the spec.s on that compressor?

DarrelK wrote:Cans are just cans....just a simple dip tube, add your mix, one or two mixing balls, propellant and throw on the tip.
What's the spec.s on that compressor?

Yep I know, and I'm thinking it's a bad batch of charged cans....but the paint shop tells me it's that my colour match has too much base and not much colour and it's hard to get a can to spray that properly.

Here's a link if you wanna see how they behave:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk-uqEUAHdd ... bxt4r3pl0q

Anyway, the compressor is 4CFM at 90 PSI.

That compressor is too small for any "normal" gun that we use in automotive. Even the LVLP guns use more CFM than that.....

DarrelK wrote:That compressor is too small for any "normal" gun that we use in automotive. Even the LVLP guns use more CFM than that.....

I'm not opposed to buying a compressor.

for a small job your compressor is fine. the rating is what the pump can output, if you have a tank at 150 psi, it'll put out plenty of air until the tank gets down to 90psi. if you've got the recovery set high enough, it won't be a problem. if you're worried about it, just stop spraying when the pump kicks on and spray again when it turns off.

if you're not going to do much of this, you can get a cheap gun from harbor freight and toss a regulator on it and set it to the recommended pressure with the trigger pulled. i've got a couple different sized guns for spraying furniture and i've used them on motorcycle fairings. they work great, just keep them clean.

I’ve been using an ANI R150/t and so far I love it. It’s $150 shipped from Italy. I don’t know if it’s built for water but I’ve used regular guns with latex and then cleaned them out really good. Then do a final rinse with IPA. I’ve never sprayed waterborne. If the viscosity isn’t too thick you could use a mini gun from HF. I like the mini touch up gun for $12 92126 but it only has a .8mm tip. So it may not be a good fit. Do you have any paint left in the cans? Perhaps you could carefully remove the propellant and not the base coat by spraying them upside down. . Then poke a hole to dump out the paint. Then spray it with a cheap gun. I think your compressor might work with a small gun. If you were spraying it from a rattle can it should be thin enough to spray through a .8mm tip. For $12 the harbor freight adjustable detail gun might do the trick. It’s a small gamble. Most of the other guns at HF require a huge amount of air and would empty your compressor in a flash.

-Vetsen

Thanks guys!

Well, I walked into an auto body supplier and said "I've got two questions, what do I need to spray waterborne automotive paint...and do you have it in stock?"

The people at the store we're incredibly helpful, set me up with a new bigger compressor and a couple dirt cheap hvlp guns. I got a pint mixed up and headed home.

I ate bit of crap from swmbo for dropping 1200 bucks on a piss ant task I was going to do with rattle cans....but after setting things up, cutting the paint with 10 percent controller and loading up the gun; the rest went like butter.

The mini hvlp gun had a real small tip, and it produced a super fine mist, great for the speaker grills. I could have stepped it up to the bigger gun, but I didn't mind taking a few extra minutes with what I had loaded up. In the end they came out mint.