Chris
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I like to do a light sand first but I’ve seen others use red Scotchbrite which I think is too coarse.
Cross hatch pattern when spraying base coat. First coat at 45 deg then second coat at 90 deg to first coat.
I don’t do very many so usually just use the spray can stuff. Can be interesting to match the texture but works ok. Tried the water based one and hate it.
Yes, I’ve used it. Mainly on PP. Seemed to work just fine – none have come back so figure that it must be ok.
Wow! Ported and polished guns. :huh:
Actually I can see the benefit for cleaning and at the fluid tip. I tried grey Scotchbrite on an aluminium cup a while back. Scratched the crap out of it. Think I might just stick to soaking, round toothpicks, bottle brushe and soft cloths.
The update CDs come out every 3 months but Dupont have got smart over the last couple of years and limited the time that the program will work unless you get a new CD to extend it.
Just about everything is available online, formulae, variations, TDS etc. The only thing you can’t do is link your spectro, if you have one.
Agreed, AZ3 is an excellent gun. I have a 1.3 and it is used for clear only on smaller jobs. Fan is a little smaller than the Tekna but sprays very evenly, not quite as flat as the Tekna but still very good.
About the only complaint I would have is that it tends to get a buildup around the fluid tip and this compromises spray pattern. Have to keep it perfectly clean and it gives excellent results. I was going to downgrade it to use for base but with the prices currently available out of the UK, excluding VAT, it is a remarkable bargain. Probably best cheap gun you can buy at the moment. Think I might buy a couple. At $114 delivered how could you go wrong?
Thanks for the welcomes, fellas.
Chris72, I’m in Canberra. Get up to Sydney occasionally, but haven’t been out Penrith way for a long time.
25 quid? That really is a bargain! I paid $1500 for mine which I bought from my supplier when they updated to a new system. They guaranteed that there would be not less than 200ml in each tin, some were a lot more. Dupont have since replaced the rack and all the lids so it’s now virtually new.
I’d try to recover what I could. Might be worth using the acrylic thinners, add a little to the tins that have thickened up and, if necessary, use a paint stirrer to open up the tinter a bit so the thinners can soak in. Let it soften up for a day or so then stir and add a little more if necessary. Might help if you have at least one tin of each type colour/pearl/metallic that was in new or very good condition so that you can get a feel for the right consistency. Some colours, especially blues, tend to be a little thinner than others like whites/yellows, but not much.
Have a chat to your local supplier. Where you have tins that are not recoverable they might be willing to sell you what’s left in their tins once they get down to 200ml. That way you get fresh tinter, in the right tin and not have to pay for a full litre. They might also be able to do top-ups of 200ml to 500ml for the slower moving tinters, either direct in to your tins if you take them there, or in 200ml tins sent out to you. One tip: transfer the AM6 Black to a 1 litre tin rather than the 4 litre that it comes in. It is being used less and less now and goes off too quick in the bigger tin.
Did you get binders as well? Don’t know if it’s available there (should be) but consider the L400 binders (AL145 & AL146) for economy jobs and ask about the 510 and 610 binders for 2K and basecoat, respectively. Much cheaper than the 6000 binders and, for 610, if mixed with 30-50% reducer (not 80%) then they cover just as well as the 6000 for a third of the price. Dupont rep told me to do this and it works a treat.
Register for the update CDs through your supplier/distributor. You’ll also need a dedicated PC. They say Pentium 4 with 2Gb RAM but that is very slow. I run a dual core Athlon 2.6GHz with 4Gb RAM and it’s OK. The program is a real hog – you can’t have anything else on that PC or it will slow to a crawl. Get scales that measure to 1/100th gram, not 1/10th gram. These tinters are very strong so you’ll need the extra accuracy.
I have an older spectro (spectrophotometer = camera) that doesn’t read flake size. Still, I use it on every job. Today I had a Hyundai in Noble White (NW). When I brought up the colour in the computer there were 32 variants! And, that was just for Korea. I didn’t bother with all the others. Took a spectro reading and that narrowed down to the nearest variant, then let the machine shade to a 0.0 match. Took maybe 5 minutes start to finish. Mixed the colour and then checked against the car. Added a touch of reduced black to grey it up a little and that was it. Painted the panel to the edge and it was near perfect.
I treat it as a tool. It saves time – I can remember one job where I was trying to match a very faded light violet blue and it took me 3 hours to get even close. With the spectro I’m there in a few minutes and often it’s spot on first time. They do have a weakness and that is reddish blues and dark greys with red/violet and blue. Those ones still need a little eye matching, especially for flip. I often match 6 colours in a day – without the spectro I’d have no time for anything else and it really helps when you’re trying to match someone else’s mistake.
I don’t have the colour sample chips and, TBH, don’t miss them.
I can understand pretty much how you feel Andy. Before I had this shop I spent nearly three years working mobile. Doesn’t get quite as cold here as there but I’ve sprayed in sub-zero temperatures too. Spray gun in one hand, heat gun in the other. :S
For me it was to establish a customer base to pay the rent in a shop but they were a few tough years. The final straw came when I was trying to paint a bar in nearly gale force winds. The paint came out the front of the gun no problem, then turned 90 degrees. Not a drop on the job. :huh: I started looking for a shop the next day. 😉
I have this system.
Some of the tinters aren’t used very much and eventually start to thicken especially if there’s not a lot in the tin. I go through each tin every month when I do a paint order and those that are thickening up just add a little AB380 reducer. It’s a bit of guesswork because you don’t want to over thin and affect the way the tinter will work in a mix but pearls are worth over $400 for a one litre tin and xirallics close to $1000, so you can’t afford to just keep throwing them out. I’ve also used acrylic lacquer thinner and had no problems with that either, in fact if anything it works a little better being not quite as volatile as the AB380.
When they get very old the tinters start to get tiny lumps of hardened product that will get through a medium fine filter. At that point you have no choice – bin it.