Tips, Tricks & Professional Advice

Do not process water-base and solvent-coatings through the same siphon or fluid hoses. Otherwise you are setting yourself up for a reaction inside the hoses resulting in trash in your filters and possibly in your finish. Maintain specific spray equipment, or at a minimum, separate hoses for both coating vehicles. Water and oil do not mix. Oil mists in your compressed air system need to be filtered with a second stage coalescing filter, (with the first stage being a water separator filter). Water and air are corrosive on bare ferrous metals. Finishing equipment in contact with the water-base coating should be stainless steel or...

“How can I measure my coating dry film thickness?” It is important to apply coatings within the coating manufacturers recommended Dry Film Thickness (DFT). Too little DFT and the coating may fall short of providing the proper protection, whereas too much DFT may cause mud cracking in the film, or unnecessary use of costly coating materials. There are two ways to check dry film thickness. The first is by using a measurement instrument, and the second by compiling the wet film thickness and doing a simple math calculation. Dry film thickness instrument technologies range from: comparative, magnetic, or electronic. The mechanical comparative...

Teflon tape is one of those great new products from the early 70’s.  A customer’s recent stubborn coating leak confirmed why we discourage the use of Teflon tape on fluid fittings.  In the wet coating industry there are two types of threads NPT (National Pipe Tapered) and NPS (National Pipe Straight).  The industry standard in the wet coating business has the tapered NPT tread used on air connections and the straight NPS thread on fluid connections. The NPT thread design makes the seal between the male and female tapered threads on the air fittings.  Where as the NPS design has...

The following spray booth maintenance schedule includes the Federal and Fire Marshall Requirements because they are intermixed with the mechanical maintenance.   WEEKLY The exhaust filter manometer gauge should be checked. When the resistance across the dirty exhaust filters exceeds .5 inches of resistance from when the filters were new, change the exhaust filters.    At the same time, vacuum the booth exhaust chamber.   As needed clean the floor and/or replace the flame resistant floor paper, and replace any burned-out tubes.   QUARTERLY In addition to the weekly maintenance, the wall-mounted water and coalescing compressed air filter elements should...

1/4" I.D. hose - 8.2 oz./.24 Liter 3/8" I.D. hose - 18.4 oz./.54 Liter 1/2" I.D. hose - 32.6 oz./.96 Liter