Newbie Spray Gun Setup Tips and Best (PSI) Air Pressure, To Spray With

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Hey, it’s Tony with another live stream. Today’s topic is all about Newbie Spray Gun Setup Tips and Best (PSI) Air Pressure, To Spray With.

Thank you all for joining in. Merry Christmas everyone!

There are two kinds of spray guns. We have the old school one called the siphon feed spray gun. You put the paint in the cup and it siphons up and paint comes out.

My dad used to spray with this and sometimes I use it, but not as much anymore. It’s good for heavy duty primers.

It’s better to spray with it parallel the ground and not tilting the spray gun down since it’s hard to catch the fluid. Even if you have a quarter-full of paint, it starts spitting out if you’re spraying at a tilting angle.

Notice there’s no air regulator on the gauge on this one. Most of the pros can determine the air pressure just by hearing it and how it’s spraying out.

However, you can still attach an air regulator if you want to. There are still some people who uses them and some shops still sell them. The new high end guns have the digital gauge built-in on the handle like the SATA RPs.

The second style spray gun is called the Gravity Spray Gun. The paint is sitting on top and pulls down into your spray gun. The air comes in which feeds and sprays the material out.

I’ll show you how to set up a brand new spray gun right now (Basic set up and how to set up air). Check out my quick demo on video.

Question: The Warwick came with two tips. How will I know the tip size of each?

They are labeled. You should see it on either the side or the stem of the needle. You should be able to tell just by looking at it. It might be a little harder if you are differentiating a 1.4mm to a 1.2mm tip size, but it’s easier if you are differentiating it to a 1.8mm.

When you’re setting up your spray gun, make sure everything is nice and tight. I like to have full fluid flow when I paint cars, so I make sure that my needle is all the way without it coming out. Then squeeze the trigger, tighten it and turn the knob 1/8 of an inch.

See how my air regulator shows 80 pounds of pressure. If you pull the trigger, it comes down to 15 pounds. We’ll set it to 26 pounds by adjusting the valve while pulling the trigger.

I like to use 26-27 psi for base coat and single stage enamel and 28-29 psi for clear coat. Sometimes, your spray gun will show that you need to set it up to 10 pounds of pressure. It means cap pressure.

Watch the video as I show you fluid flow. You have straight and wide. I like to spray full width for more coverage. Some of the spray guns like the Warwick 980HE, have a 12-inch fan, so I like to narrow it down to 11 inches.

Narrow fluid flow is good for projects like door jambs or fender wells but you need to cut the air pressure a little bit more to avoid spraying out a glob of paint.

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When I started out, I used only one gun for all my jobs. Then just bought more guns later on in my body work career.

Question: When you spray from the gun, do you spray thin or thick layers?

I would say medium wet but it really depends. Sometimes you’ll see a chemical reaction when spraying like your paint pulls away from the parts of the panel. That’s biting or separating.

When this happens, you need to spray lightly. You’ll be able to fix that while your painting then finish it off with heavy coats.

I used to freak out when I was younger when mistakes like these happen. Sometimes you need to wait for 30 minutes to dry your base coat then wet sand the area and redo it.

There are times that a 2-hour paint job takes 5-6 hours because of uncontrollable mistakes. Things happen. Again, prep is important. If you take your time and do it correctly, it reduces the chances of making mistakes on your paint job.

The cool thing about making mistakes is I learn from it and share it with you too. Check out the LearnAutoBodyAndPaint VIP Program as I share all of my knowledge (and my screw ups!), a 20-year veteran in auto body work.

Question: Can you clear coat over rattle can enamel?

No. You’ll get a chemical reaction. You need to put lacquer thinner and wash that enamel off or sand it and put a 2K primer sealer on it. When you do that though, you need to put light coats because you can get a chemical reaction.

Rattle can enamels and clear coats are cheap bad stuff that will give you chemical reactions.

Question: How do you paint in a 50 degree temperature or lower?

I don’t. You can heat up your garage but personally I don’t do body work when it’s cold.

For those of you who haven’t gotten my free information, go to the website and grab your FREE 85-Page Auto Body And Paint Manual.

It’s Tony from LearnAutoBodyAndPaint. Again, thank you everyone for jumping in. Join me every Thursday at 9pm Eastern.

Please Like, Share and Subscribe to my channel. I hope you guys like this.

Also, looking for some awesome spray guns? Check out the NEW spray gun line by ATOM here.

Talk soon!

Tony

Newbie Spray Gun Setup Tips and Best (PSI) Air Pressure, To Spray With

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