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Airbrush not feeding paint


Doccur

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Hi all,

 

your help with an issue I am having would be apprexiated. I have a Harder and Steenbeck Ultra airbrush with a 0.2mm nozzle and the past couple of days it has been struggling to spray anything. Today it packed up more or less completely. Air was flowing through the brush and I managed to get a bit of paint out with the pressure cranked really high. The needle is moving freely so it isn’t a problem with the trigger. I swapped out the nozzle and needle for my 0.4mm and this worked perfectly. This means it must be a problem with the 0.2mm nozzle as the needle is in good Nick. 
 

Ash

 

i have left the nozzle soaking in a general purpose cleaner overnight... for 

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Double check you have a matched set of needle, nozzle and aircap for 0.2 & 0,4mm sets.

Check that the needles are retracting when you paint, check your air pressure.

 

Check the air is coming through the brush OK.

 

What paints are you using and what are you thinning & cleaning the brush with ?

 

Paul

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Does thinner flow freely through the 0.2 nozzle? Do you feel as if even thinner has a restricted flow? 

Put the nozzle under bright light and look inside of it. It could have some paint residue that is immune to your cleaning fluid, a strand of hair from a brush (if you use one to help with the cleaning routine like I do). Get a toothpick and very gently poke around inside the nozzle, check the tip of the toothpick. If it comes out dirty you still have paint inside the nozzle.

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            hi  bmwh548 ,

 

                                      I agree with those cleanin' methods but check the Paint Cup Duct as well.

                                     Ram a beheaded Cotton Bud Stem down the tube and give it a really good rogering  !

                                    ....... you may be suprised wot comes out !

                                    Airbrushing is not Time Effecient   hhhhhhrrr !........ but gits results .

 

                                                                                                               cheery "stay safe and..... model " mumbas !

 

                                                                                                                                               Geoff

 

                                                                                                                                                   F.T.G. 3156

 

                                                                                                                   

 

 

 

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Thanks all. I have left it soaking in acetone for a few hours before I poke around to try and dislodge what is probably some dried paint. 
 

It’s definitely not a mismatched nozzle as the 0.4 works perfectly. 
 

Ash

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Sounds like it's blocked with dry paint. A few years ago I bought a tip cleaning reamer and a set of small brushes for specifically cleaning my airbrushes. You'd be amazed what still comes out, even after I've flushed it through with the appropriate cleaning solution. The little brushes are worth investing in. They really do get every speck of paint residue out of the airbrush and give it a thorough cleaning..

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Thankyou all for your advice. You were spot on... dried paint in the nozzle. After soaking with acetone and using various implements I have finally got it cleared! Hooray! 
 

Ash

 

Note to self... clean airbrush more thoroughly In future. 

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Onward and upwards :yes:

 

I use H &S airbrushes pretty much exclusively, I find them to be the easiest to strip, clean and change sizes not to mention the fabulous results they give, a quality tool.

 

Their one Achilles heels (IMHO) is the nozzle is sensitive to paint build up especially 0.2 when changing form one colour to the next or painting over a few days.  I found the most likely paint to cause blocking was water based acrylics (Mig Ammo, AK, Vallejo ect) when using a standard thinners/cleaners for them.  I found I hardly ever got the problem with alcohol base acrylics like Tamiya, Mr Hobby Aqueous and using their cleaner/thinners, I've never had the issue at all with lacquer based paint Mr Hobby, Tamiya, Zero or AK extreme etc.  What I believe is the lacquers based being solvent based are very resistant to tip dry and stay far more stable in the nozzle, the same with alcohol based although a little less then lacquer, where as water based is very prone to tip dry and is a lot less stable and dry much faster.

 

The water based acrylics will always to some degree build up on the needle and in the nozzle.  The basic cleaners wont shift this dried paint unless it's agitated physically, a back flushing and flushing isn't sufficient and with a 0.2 hole it's doesn't take much to restrict or block it.  I switched to using Mr tool cleaner for all my paint and I rarely get any nozzle restriction or blocking and if I did it after using water based primer, I now only ever put these primers through 0.4 and nozzle block is the thing of the past.

 

Try changing your cleaner.               

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I think many paint block issues are, as stated above, purely down to paint type/choice. Also I rarely have any issue when using lacquer paints. They seem to avoid any paint blocking issues. Also if you're spraying cars/bikes, as I do, the paint never seems to clog as you have the tip wide open to spray glossy coats of paint. If you're using a very fine tip and spraying mottled camo on an aircraft for example, then tip dry is more prominent. Add to that quick drying acrylic paint and problems can arise..

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The problem with waterbased acrylics is that once they're dry you can't rehydrate them. Once they're dry, that's pretty much it. With lacquers it's the complete opposite, you can let them fully cure, add some lacquer thinner, give it a few minutes and the paint is fluid again. That's why it's so much easier to wash up the airbrushes after lacquer paints. Similar issue with old school enamels, where the curing isn't caused by the thinner evaporating, but it's actually a chemical reaction inside the paint that can take days to fully happen. If you catch it early you can flush it out of the airbrush with no fuss, but if it's fully dry you're going to be scraping it off.

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