Building an Airbrushing Booth.

[tetters]

.....im cheap and use this fancy thing called "outside" and lighting is by the most powerful one on the market...the sun --josh

Well, at least at this time of year you don't have to worry about bugs getting stuck in the wet paint.

Wayne

No but on a day like today your paint might freeze! Man its flipping cold out there today!!!

[OBJack]

That is turning out to be one very professional looking piece of cabinetry you are creating Tetters.
If you ever wanted to give up you day job, I think you have found an alternative form of employment...Airbrush Cabinet maker extraordinaire.



Jack

[tetters]

Finally got my blower/fan yesterday. I had to call Acklands a few times just to remind them to ship the damn thing! :evil: Sheesh!

Anyways its in and I can hopefully finish the mechanical end of my Airbrush Booth perhaps this Sunday. I desperately want to try it out.

[tetters]

Got the fan mounted today. Also picked up an 18" light fixture to sit on top.





That a plywood collar made out of 3/4 ply. I needed it to give some distance so that the flange on the output would clear the bottom of the plenum.





So much to do. Tomorrow, is a big day though. Going to finally get the decking and road bed down for the new layout. I'm really looking forward to it.

[OBJack]

And it worked OK?


Jack

[tetters]

And it worked OK?


Jack

So far so good. Fired up no problem and there is some good airflow getting pulled through the filter. It runs pretty quiet too. I haven't officially tried it out yet, I painted the tower outside as it has been nice and sunny the last couple of days.

I could use it ductless for now so long as I stay away from solvent based paints.

I just put it in there to show it off.

[2-8-2]

Why not mount it on the top? I have mine mounted at the top rear of the booth, gaining access to outdoors with only one 90 degree bend. Mounting it on the top will also shorten the run.

I've been looking at building my own spray booth and came across this thread. Here's a little intel from the world of spray booths:

As for venting to the top of the booth (updraft booth), in the real world it's just not done that way. This can have adverse affects on both booth performance and finish quality.
It's important to understand what happens when you vent to the top of the booth. First, you're working against gravity; that means you'll need higher airflow rates for proper ventilation. Secondly, the updraft pulls the atomized paint away from the part, requiring higher spraying pressures to compensate. The resulting finish problems created by high airflow rates and high spraying pressures are further compounded by the limited adjustments on airbrushes (versus conventional spray guns), and limited thinners and reducers available for hobby paints. Although automotive thinners and reducers have been used in hobby applications, their corrective properties may not be sufficient to overcome a poorly designed spray booth. Finally, when venting to the top of the booth, there is a good chance that overspray particles in the filter will fall down into the paint. It's not a good idea to hang dirt above the part you're painting.

Cross-draft (fan @ the back) or down-draft (fan @ the bottom) are the way to go.

Also, I've found that for the size of the booths we are building, we need 300-350 CFM blowers for proper air movement. There's a fancy math formula used to figure out your CFM requirements, and it also depends on your ductwork and other factors.

[tetters]

http://www.briansmodelcars.com/tutorials/tutorial/23

I hadn't thought about this thread for awhile now. Basically, because ever since I installed the booth I hadn't given it much thought. It's in, it's ducted and it works. I took most of my ideas and instructions for the build from the web page linked to above, which probably saved me a ton of headaches.

I guess the only other addition(s) to the booth that I can think of at this time is a "Lazy Susan" turntable to place parts so I can rotate them as I paint. I'm also looking for an inexpensive lamp I can clip on to shine a light on the parts I'm painting from the front. Just to put a bit more light on things as I paint.

None of which are a huge priority for me at this point as I have been focused on my layout for the last few months.

[doctorwayne]

I've moved my booth from my basement workshop to a separate room in the garage. The benefits are no more paint smell in the house (my wife came home one day and complained about "that stinky paint": I had brush-painted some small parts about an hour earlier, using PollyScale water-based paint. ) and no more compressor noise in the house. I often work late at night, so now my painting will bother no one.
The drawback is that the garage is about 100' behind the house and, of course, unheated. This means that everything - paint, airbrush, thinners, and models to be painted need to get to and from the shop without getting rained or snowed upon, or blown away by a gust of wind. I also have to pre-heat the paint room before running the compressor, although, so far, I haven't needed to leave the heat on while painting. We'll see what happens when the weather gets colder. I use a portable electric heater, but with the "room" just under 4'X6', it doesn't take long to warm-up.
In addition to making the room "critter proof" (the garage was once a house, but is over 100 years old, with an indigenous population of mice, chipmunks, snakes, and sometimes, red squirrels), I installed a screened replacement air intake. When the exhaust fan is running, I open a through-the-wall duct to allow fresh air into the room. The improvement in fan performance is astonishing. Operating inside the house, the fan couldn't get enough replacement air due to the "tightness" of the house construction, even with a window open in the next room. Even with the fan running for a couple of hours after the painting was finished, paint odours lingered.
With the new set-up, odours are almost gone as soon as painting is completed. The booth and fan are the same, and the run to outdoors is still about 6' (although I've used 4" aluminum duct instead of 4" flexible plastic).

I installed a turntable in the booth when I built it, but almost never use it. Instead, I have a collection of leftover 1"x2", 1"x1", and various odd-size pieces of wood that serve as painting "handles". Simply slip the body shell over a suitably-sized stick, hold the stick in a latex-gloved hand, and spray. For small items, I place them on a piece of masking tape, sticky side up, then tape the tape to another stick.

And, despite what you say about updraft booths, the only time that anything falls from the filter area at the top of the booth is when I change the filter (one half of a standard 11"X20" fibreglass furnace filter). The back of the booth is well-coated with overspray, as is the floor and turntable (that's why I can't see filter life being very long in such designs), but I don't have any problem with paint particles falling back onto the item being painted.

For lighting, in addition to an overhead fluorescent fixture, I use two desk lamps, as shown below, on adjustable arms. The picture is from the shop in the house, but the current set-up in the garage is the same. Some of my "painting sticks" are visible in the foreground.


Wayne

[scoobyloven]

well as for an airbrush booth i hav built one in the past and it has gone under a few changes due to doing bigger work as i also do custom airbrushing on other media
here is how my little booth is set up i took a diy shop work bench the ones that has a drawer in it they run around 80.00 and work great for this. i took the top and cut it to fit a box fan in "to blow down" and same to the inside of drawer and placed the fan and screwed into the drawer. it took up 1/2 of the drawer so still have place to store what ever then get your self a filter and place it over the fan i also took a pice of window screen and made a frame for it to have a flat area to work on i then installed a light on the under side of the top shelf. and drilled 2 holes for my air hoses i drilled them a little smaller then a qiuck relese. and ran hoses to a manifold at the compressor. the good parts is the back of this you can put some hooks to old you guns and little bins to hold paint.
on my bench i took one corner and made a clean out booth for my guns i cut a hole to fit a 2 liter bottle for it is about 6-8 up and then i have some where to shot the color when i clean out the gun. i also have my paper towels hung on a roller .

as for paint any water base works great less smell
oil you have to deal with thinner.
craft paint you can get from hobby lobby just put a screen on the bottle
mix 1:1:1 paint, water, rubbing alchol
airbrush paint /many diff compenies "autoair,bagger,creative,house of kolor,ect.ect"
i use either autoair or creative.
but for when i do custom work i would use autoair,creativ,house of kolor.

[Russ Bellinis]

Scooby, your paint booth sounds interesting. Could you post some pics?

[scoobyloven]

i'll get some pics of it as i gave it to my da so when i get out their i''ll get some pics

[P5se Camelback]

It's funny how you get to a place in life where you can't remember what you had for dinner two nights ago, but you can remenber the correct year for an article on building a proper metal, inflammable spray booth for air brush work in Model Railroader! All I had to do was pull out that year and sure enough, right there in the January, 1988 issue is the article that I used to build my spray booth. (I unfortunately no longer have it, as when a new job presented itself after a time of unemployment, I went on ahead to find a place to live and start my new job and my [then] wife and very small daughter packed everything up and got the house ready for sale. The Spraybooth did not make the trip ["... more of Bil's goofy homemade junk"] and neither did a 9" carbon steel Sabatier french chef's knife [that I loved] that she always required a trip to the hosptal and stitches if she looked at it cross-eyed! Bummer! But i digress ...)

It was not difficult to build - I built it in an unheated detached garage in mid-winter, in Pennsylvania, all bundled up. It worked beautifully! I ran duct up and out through a three-pane basement window that I had replaced the glass of one pane with a piece of aluminum flashing, on the outside, epoxied to a piece of 1/16" aircraft plywood (from the R/C airplane section of the LHS) with the proper hole cut in both.

If you can't find the January, 1988 issue of Model Railroader, page 128, just e-mail me your address and I'll snail mail you a hard copy. Paint fumes are not to be messed with! There is evidence that over time, exposure to solvent-based paint fumes are extremely toxic and can have an adverse effect on one's nervous system. So ... that said ... look it up or email me ...

Oh, the dimensions are 24"w x18"d x18"h ... but you guys are all smart enough to enlarge it, just do the math (formula included) to get the fan cfm rating correct for the size of the booth.

biL

[MasonJar]

Tetters,

Could you post a link or part number for the fan that you ended up using (how's it working , BTW?)? I have just acquired a metal cabinet that I think would make a good booth, but it needs proper ventilation to work. While I am generally use water-based paint for brushing, I would like to vent spray bombs (no airbrush yet) and glue fumes like lacquer thinner and Tenax - likely requiring an insulated motor (if in-stream) or squirrel-cage type.

Comments/recommendations welcome!

Thanks,

Andrew

[MasonJar]

Tetters,

Could you post a link or part number for the fan that you ended up using (how's it working , BTW?)?

Nevermind - reread the thread and found it... :oops:

Andrew