How to best airbrush small/tiny things and also airbrush cavities?

[Treehugger]

I find myself having a difficult time airbrushing small things. The air spray tend to move things around if I don't hold them firmly in place. Airbrushing a cavity seem to reflect the spray back into my face. Sure, small things can be fastened with tape or something, but longer bits of styrene rods tend to wiggle about making aiming even more difficult with the rod moving back and forth.

 

One obvious issue in all of this, is the difficulty aiming the airbrush precisely.

 

I am thinking that, perhaps the best solution is to keep the paint thinned, and rely on a much lower psi. Would a psi of 15 or 10+ even work?

Having said that, with my Iwata 0.35 Eclipse airbrush, for reasons unknown, I cannot lower psi lower than 8 or so, else paint won't get sucked out and being atomized.

Edited August 31, 2021 by Treehugger

[Citadelgrad]

I always take a scrap piece of wood, like a paint stirring stick from a big box store, and apply a loop of making tape to it, and I stick my small parts to that.  Just remember that after you shoot one side, you likely need a new piece of tape, they will blow away.

 

Not sure on the cavities.  I tend to thin my paint and go with as low a PSI as I can get away with.  

[quang]

The best way could be painting the parts BEFORE assembling them.

I also stick the tiny parts to an icecream stick with a spot of blue tack to prevent them flying away.

[denders]

Treehugger, which Eclipse do you have, gravity feed, side feed, or bottom feed? If it's bottom feed, that will require a higher air pressure than a gravity feed.

 

I've found that keeping the air pressure a little higher and using a MAC valve right before the air brush works better if you're trying to go with a low paint flow.

 

Dave

 

[Woody V]

I use three methods.

 

1. Put a small dab of Blue Tack (mine happens to be yellow) on the end of a cocktail stick and stick the part to it and then stick it in a block of foam packing material.

 

2. Attach a small alligator clip to a cocktail stick and use it to hold the part and then again, stick it in a block of the afore mentioned foam block.

 

3. Glue a piece of thin styrene rod (or stretched sprue) to the mounting point with Tamiya Extra Thin (TET) and then hold that with the alligator clip holder mentioned in #2. If you don't use a ton of glue the styrene rod will break off easily and a little cleanup takes care of that.

 

3A. Instead of TET you can also use PVA glue if you're holding it by a recessed area of the part to be painted.

Alligator Clips and my Yellow Tack in action:

[quang]

Soldering tweezers are also handy…

[Treehugger]

On 8/31/2021 at 11:47 PM, denders said:

Treehugger, which Eclipse do you have, gravity feed, side feed, or bottom feed? If it's bottom feed, that will require a higher air pressure than a gravity feed.

 

I have the top fed gravity fed HP-CS one.

[Woody V]

Went back and re-read your post and I know what you mean about the longer pieces of styrene rod because I recently played that game. Score: Styrene Rod - 1, Me -0. I guess if you could secure both ends it would hold still but in my case I just kept spritzen' while the thing kept bobbin' and weavin'. 

 

As we say when we don't have a fix - Good Luck.

[denders]

5 hours ago, Treehugger said:

I have the top fed gravity fed HP-CS one.

I have a Sotar and I found that if I wanted to go really low pressure, below 10 psi, it was easier to keep the pressure up a little and adjust a MAC valve that was right in front of the air brush, on the air hose.