So i'm gonna paint my shoebox in the garage. I'm building a spray booth within the garage, exhaust fans, filters, lots of plastic sheeting. Im trying to do a top notch job so I wanna use good stuff, but not go overboard.. My question is about dry air and dessicant filters. Can anyone recommend a filter/dryer set up that is good, but not over the top. Sharpe has these Regulator/filter/coalescer/dessicant dryer set ups for around $380.00 ....It's a damn nice package, but thats a little steep for my budget. Anyone have any advice for a good, affordable, yet effective set up?
Watch out with the fans make sure their explosion proof. My buddy blew up his garage painting with regular fans. Check around at some body shops sometime they will rent you their booth for a day if they got nothing going
I thought about explosion-proof fans. Those are not really in the budget either (although neither is blowing myself up). I thought about putting filters before the fans. Anyone have any good advice about fans as well, who has painted a car in a garage before?
jjjmm56 has a good idea, you might also check to see if there is a rental booth around that is for rent regularly, in your area. i have used rental booths on several occassions in the past , and if they are kept up and cleaned regularly , they are a lot better than spending a lot of money on equipment you may not use often enough to warrant the expense . good luck in your endeavor whichever way you decide to go.
Hey, What type of material will you be sparying on your Shoe? A solid colour, flake, pearl, candy? Urethane, acrylic or alkyd? A dryer/coalescer is a good idea, however for light painting not worth spending four bills for! A medium priced dryer/filter, together with draining the tank both at the start of the day, and at day's end will hold off most of your water and dirt problems. Plastic sheeting conducts static electricity, together with old box fans spells HINDENBERG! Swankey Devils C.C. " It's time for another Yea Party ! "
Check out the little 3M dryers that connect between the regulator and the spray gun as well. Its just an extra guard against moisture and I believe they are less than 5 bucks. Another good thing to do is lightly wet down the floor to keep dust down.
I use one of those last chance water seperators at the gun for insurance. I also bought a coalescing filter/dessicant filter combo from Campbell Hausfield to run. It works great, the only downfall is the desiccant housing doesn't hold as much desiccant as one of the bigger more expensive ones and needs to be changed more often. But for $150, you can't beat it.
I found that attaching house air conditioning filters to the box fans slowed the fans down terribly. Never even thought about the fans causing and explosion! Just extinguished the water heater pilot.
I picked up a 24" Dayton tube axial fan with an aluminum blade and motor isolation (spark proof) on Craigslist. It was brand new and dirt cheap. I suggest putting in a wanted ad. People store all kinds of crazy stuff and don't think about selling it until prompted.
Set your fan up to push air into the garage from outside. Put a filter in a window on the far side of the garage. That way you get airflow thru the garage but it is not pulled over the fan motor. You don't need a dessicant pack. (Although they don't hurt). Run at least 25 foot of 1/2" steel line along the wall on an uphill slant from your compressor, with a dip about 2 foot out from the compressor head with a tap on the bottom of it. If you don't have a garage wall 25 foot long, thats okay, run your pipe around an inside corner. 99% of the moisture will condense inside that pipe in the first 20 foot of pipe and run back downhill to the "dip" where it can be drained after your paint job is finished. Attach your flex hole to the end of the 25 foot of steel pipe.---I painted a thousand cars with that set-up, with no water in the paint. ---Brian
Here is a picture of a homebuilt dewatering manifold that I built about 35 years ago from steel waterpipe. I had a small garage at the time, so I stacked the pipes as shown to get my 25 foot. (Ignore the big sump pump hose running out the window---its a temporary measure because of some minor flooding issues) After I built the dewatering manifold, I never ever had water in my airlines again----but on a humid summers day, I could easily drain a quart of water out of those 3 taps you see at the bottom after a full car paint job.---Brian
I paint in a garage.....box fan in one window blowing out, heater filter in window on opposite side of garage, and plastic sheeting coving the walls to protect all my pics, diecast cars, etc from over spray. All I've got is a cheap water separator/regulator on my compressor. You can see some of my "setup" in this pic....
go to a truck wrecking yard and get a dryer off a semi, then put a new desacant kit in it and use it for ever, your tools will love it.
Hmmmm...well I painted heavy equipment ( Cat D6-D9's, Terex's, etc) for YEARS in a large tent, and used a diesel fired 350,000 btu Master heater for heat in the winter....was painting with single stage and urethane and cleaning guns with lacquer thinner.....that that how ya wanna.
Rap a chain around the frame to the floor. Gives a path to get rid of static electricity. Learned that trick for Ralph Rielly, Rielly's Auto Body, McKees Rocks, Pa. Best dam old enamel painter I ever saw.
I agree with Brain. Positive pressure (blowing inwards with a vent to the outside) is not only safer with the "fan question" but seems to keep the dust down too.
Thanks for all the insight guys. I appreciate it. I've seen in older posts about painting in a garage, some guys are pretty well set against it. Glad to see there are some die hard do-it-yerselfers out there.
I can't imagine painting heavy equipment, that musta sucked huh? I just finished a job that I had the diesel fired heater running constantly while I was spraying. Usually I run it to get it warm and then shut if off for the duration. It was too cold for that this time. I had alot and I mean alot of airflow, but I'm still here to tell the story.
Painted in my backyard for over 20 years. Never got too carried away with high tech gear. Plastic booth,wet floor and as for a fan? I used a car fan and ran it on a battiery charger. the motors on car fans are seal, unlike a standard 110 or 220 electic motor.My garage was not air tight so I never used any air filters to let air in.Never had any trouble. As for water filters. A $25.00 filter with a glass bowl so I can see if there is water in the system.This was mounted on the outlet on the compressor and a small filter at the gun.Agian no trouble and did it this way for 20+ years.
I removed the walk-in door to the garage and used the opening for furnace filters to ensure plenty of clean outside air flow, less likely to suck the plastic towards the car. For the fan I placed an old furnace fan in a cardboard box duct system I made. Lots of filters on the garage side pulling the air to the fan which exhausted out under the overhead door. Taped off the rest of the opening with more cardboard and plastic. Warned the neighbour not to park across the lane so I wouldn't overspray his vehicle if the filters failed. When you wet the floor be careful with the air hose and any puddles that the hose may drag through and splash up on your paint job. Good luck!
Haha...it didn't suck that bad, I actually enjoyed it much more than fixin' 'em. The shop I worked would strip 'em down pretty far, and I'd paint 'em in pieces....most of the tima anyway. Not only did I paint 'em, but also sandblasted 'em too. That sucked, laying on your back under a Cat 966, in a fresh air suit, being run off an IR 185, and pulling tearoffs so you can see every 5 minutes.....then getting up to add another 100lb bag o' sand to the pot....haha. Then ya gotta get all the sand back off.....that sucked too, especially if ya didn't get all the sand blown out of the small crevases....you'd get a face full of sand when making passes with the primer....haha! In the winter, I ran the heater the whole time.....but I couldn't paint right away, as the metal was cold and once it started warming up in the tent, it would "draw" moisture...... Ah, those were good times.....haha!
If you have a fridge nearby you can use it for an air dryer. Run some copper pipe through the wall, loop it around and back out. Works as good as a $350 unit.
I cant even remember how many paint jobs ive done with just poppin the door a bit, i guess my thoughts were always that i was gona cut and buff it anyways, id hang a bugzapper with the lights off for a couple hours before. Done alotta nice jobs that way.
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