Help! Minimum equipment needed? LPHV or old school?

saburai

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Hi Gang! I'm considering getting back into doing my own paint and body work. 20 + years ago, I owned a shop with a buddy, we did all types of restorations and engine building. He was a bit of a genius, and was fantastic with a spray gun! It's been a long time, but with Fred's guidance, I did my share of finish work, including all phases of bodywork and spraying. So now I'm looking to do some limited auto refinishing and of course I am wanting minimum investment... As much as I'd love a high end or even "fairly mediocre" setup, $$$ just not there... Right now all I have is a pancake portable compressor, What would be the minimum I could get away with? What about a gun, filters and a water separator? Anyway, sorry for the ramble! Could you experienced guys please give me an idea of what I would need to get started again with either conventional or LPHV painting? Which do you prefer? I've got zero experience with LPHV...
 

Clb

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I made it to
Pancake...

Only thing a man needs to shoot an auto is an UNLIMITED SUPPLY OF CLEAN AIR.

Best go cup gun and save up...

Only my .02.

Nuthin beats new school high tech gear.
But you can rival $$$ with talent.
 

saburai

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I made it to
Pancake...

Only thing a man needs to shoot an auto is an UNLIMITED SUPPLY OF CLEAN AIR.

Best go cup gun and save up...

Only my .02.

Nuthin beats new school high tech gear.
But you can rival $$$ with talent.

Thabjs for the advice, but I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to say to me...
 

saburai

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I'm a pretty fair hand at spraying, everything from my old partner's high end old school pro set up, my Badger airbrush or a rattle can. I'm sure that with some practice, I'd do fine with the variety of new systems. I've started researching LPLV and it seems to look promising on many fronts.
 

Clb

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Not nuff cfm with a 5 gal tank.
Think bout twin 80+ gal machines.
Variations in psi kill mixture consistency.
Big driven drier, not just a water trap.

RUNNING hvlp adds a learning curve.
Changing to h2o base was fun.

Good old school gear is "good"
Good new school gear can be a godsend.
A good hand can rock ****** Gear.
A ****** hand wont rock great gear.
Sorry for the heatstroke like reply I was in The boat all day suckin suds.
 
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saburai

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Not nuff cfm with a 5 gal tank.
Think bout twin 80+ gal machines.
Variations in psi kill mixture consistency.
Big driven drier, not just a water trap.

RUNNING hvlp adds a learning curve.
Changing to h2o base was fun.

Good old school gear is "good"
Good new school gear can be a godsend.
A good hand can rock ****** Gear.
A ****** hand wont rock great gear.
Sorry for the heatstroke like reply I was in The boat all day suckin suds.

IMHO I got a fail to middling hand. What about LPLV?
 

Clb

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Hella
Value
Lotsa
Pennies

Puts the material DOWN nice.
Been decade's now, last I used one they had just gotten reasonable in price.
The tech now most likely makes them dino's.
We must have some current paint shop guys here to chime in.
 

Danielle

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How do I make an appointment???

I have a 2 stage 80 gallon from atlas I bought at Greg Smith in Delaware (no sales tax) that has been amazing. Had it in the brick and mortar shop with 3 full time techs working and took it with me and use it now. Bought it in 2011

Now that I know more about the parts and people here have helped me, I'm pretty confident fixing it if it does go down.
 

teletech

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Seems like there are a million guys on various classic and rot-rod type forums who swear by the cheap Harbor Freight HVLP guns. I will allow that they do an amazing job considering how stupidly cheap they are and I do own a couple that I use for certain utility spraying tasks and don't own me a thing. Many good paint jobs have been accomplished with them I don't doubt. The problem with them in my mind the the lack of efficiency. Now, they will get more of the paint on the vehicle than the old cup gun style for sure, most of those rigs were only 55-60% transfer rate, the rest wound up in the air. The HF gun might be more like 75%? Still a lot of paint in the air. When the paint was cheap lacquer that was fine, but some of what I shoot is $600/gallon so blowing 25% of that into the air just hurts my feelings. Do a few paint jobs and even an expensive gun pays for itself. The other thing I don't love about the HF gun is it's an air hog. something like 17CFM. So, you need to take a lot of breaks if you have a little compressor which kills your flow if you are painting a whole car. My Anest gun is supposedly able to put 90+% of the paint on the car and do it using just over half the air of the HF gun. I happen to already have what most would consider a large compressor, but it's nice to have it not run all the time getting my air all wet, it's also really nice to not have the paint dust hanging in the shop.
Speaking of equipment, get thee to a popular online auction site and buy thee a PAPR! Seriously, a lot of the automotive paint WILL mess you up. You don't have to spend $1200 for a good setup, $50 for a used blower, $10 for a hose, 25 for a hood and $20-90 for a filter. A little know-how and some scrounging and you can have a good setup to spray in for as little as $200. If you bought a big compressor that's far from your spray area you can run supplied air instead of PAPR, but get something better than just a half-mask.

A decent middle ground on the gun front I think is the 3m Accuspray setup. If you shop hard you can get a starter kit for about $200. You get a gun with air caps from about .8mm to about 1.8mm and I love the fact I can shoot at weird angles with the PPS cup setup. Another up-side is cleanup is quick and easy. The down side is it's a mediocre gun that's going to cost you a lot in consumables. Great gun to learn with though if you are new to the gravity-fed HVLP realm and want to try out all the different paints and tip sizes. Plus you can epoxy, prime, base, and clear with just the one gun.

The other less-is-more approach is to get the lowest pressure gun you can, forget HVLP, LVLP is the new "it" gun.
Spend I think $300-600 and get something that gets most of your paint on the car and just sips air doing it. Hopefully spending the money on the gun means you can get by with a small compressor so saving money there.

Air dryer, you can DIY one with just a bunch of pipe. You can even use PVC pipe if you cool the air a bit first. I've also seen folks run the air line through a water tank to cool it to separate the water. Anyway, it's nice to have a dryer of some sort but DIY is fine and if you make one out of enough pipe it increases your effective tank size as well.
Me, I run a big compressor and just drain the water before I spray, then I have a chemical-type desiccant filter just before the regulator.
 

saburai

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Sprayit 3300 arrived today. Hopefully, I can get a handle on the other automotive drama going on in my life so I'll have some time to start using it.

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idiTravelAll

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I'm a little late to the party as usual but if you want to start with mobile dent repair you could pickup a turbine sprayer pretty cheap.
 

chillman88

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Sprayit 3300 arrived today. Hopefully, I can get a handle on the other automotive drama going on in my life so I'll have some time to start using it.

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Wow that's cheap for what it is. I'm curious to hear how you like it.
 

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