Airbrush and compressor help wanted

[aconsola]

why not get a tank of compressed nitrogen and a regulator from your local welding/gas supply house? probably won't cost much more than a new compressor, and it is totally silent.

[vwjuice]

I did not think of that. How much does it cost to refill the tank? That would be a really good way to do things.

[vwjuice]

Well I'm an idiot. I have been looking at replacing my compressor due to how noisy it is and to get an even coat of paint. Found out I had a problem with my airbrush not my compressor. I never thought about checking the cap for the bottle. The little vent hole was sealed shut. I pushed a tack through it and bam it works fine now. I have a good spray pattern and I can paint a fine line or a wide heavy line now. Unfortunately I discovered it after I was done painting the body. It's ok though as I will need a different body anyway. The stock body on my Academy SB PRO is very thin.

[bearrickster]

maybe get a longer hose and set the compressor out side also that will cut down on the noise

[vwjuice]

I did that and still got complaints. I was painting outside too.

[steve]

for the noise try putting the comp. on bigger rubber feet to isolate the vibration ( vibration = noise in froors and walls) another area to look at is the air filter and air intake , most of the noise comes from the air being suck in to the presure head . Try incresing the filter area with a towel or open cell foam . Presure heads get hot keep this in mind, do not pack it tight keep so air space around the head. I will call a freind and as him about this , we had this same talk years ago.
steve

[jwscab]

the smaller the compressor the more noisy it is typically. One thing you can do is plumb in another tank, to give you more volume. Run the compressor to fill both tanks during the time it's least 'annoying' and you should be able to use quite a bit of air before it's done.

also remember that the airbrush doesn't need much pressure, so it can work much lower than 100PSI or whatever the pressure switch is set to. Typically a compressor will kick on at 80 lbs or so, and pump up to 100 or 110. You can probably run the compressor and extra tank down to 40 lbs and still be OK. Should be enough for a body I would think.

sounds like most of the issue was with the airbrush air port though.

[vwjuice]

Yeah all of the painting issues were due to the plugged hole. I was able to drop the pressure down to 35lb last night and it worked good. I might trygeytin a piece of scrap lexan and see how it does dropping it down to 25lbs or so. Right now my compressor kicks on at 80lbs goes to 110lbs which takes about 7-8 minutes. When the tank is empty it takes about 20 minutes to fill an it's only 2 gallons.

[Johnboy72]

Sorry to poke in here, just trying to learn more about airbrushing as it's the one media I haven't tried yet. But someone mentioned Nitrogen. I can tell ya from personal experience that stuff moves so much faster than air. I used to build minitrucks with my buddies and when I hit Nitrogen, my truck would hop so much faster! I watched a big block 500 late 60's Caddy hop like a lowrider on juice on heliumn! Don't know if it would effect the airbrushers...maybe you can regulate it more?