I want a cheap but decent HVLP gun to experiment with.

[Rich Engelhardt]

I almost picked up the HF 47016 "Purple" gun last week, but, I see that the gun isn't really a HVLP - it needs 40 to 60 psi, IIRC.
The price is right though @ $12.99 on sale.
That's around the price range I want to stay at - $20 or so.

I want to put together a shop vac powered HVLP spray rig and I don't think a shop vac can put out that much pressure.
I also don't want to sink a lot into something that's just an experiment.

I've used a couple of "sweeper powered" sprayers in the past & they actually worked very well. (anybody remember the Kirby attachment?)(the other one was for spraying Sno-Flock that did double duty as a paint sprayer)
Since it was pre-waterborn clears, I had no way of really testing them with anything other than solvent based materials or "latex enamels".
The solvents ate up the plastic parts ad the "latex enamel" had,,,to be kind,,,,issues of it's own...

The finishes they laid down were pretty good though.

I'd be open to a DIY version also if anyone has any ideas there.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Bump.....
(my HF coupon runs out in a few days so I'll give this another try before I go ahead and buy the HF gun)

[John TenEyck]

A vacuum cleaner puts out maybe 80" water pressure. 32 feet of water = 14.7 psi, so 80" is some place less than 4 psi. You will need a compressor to run the HF gun.

John

[Charles Neil]

Earlex 5500 is as far down the food chain as you want to go, unless you have compressed air. the others are cheap, and perform the same, many are turned off from spraying and in most cases its a result of trying to " make chicken salad out of chicken " droppings" " doesnt work . Other wise its like trying to make pallet material look like fine figured mahogany or similar.

[David Weaver]

I think every HVLP gun works best with input between 40 and 60 psi, which should have output somewhere in the range of some fraction of that.

I have two of those HF guns, I think it's important to get a diaphragm regulator with them, and those guns used to be $40-$50, now they're $15 and they don't come with a diaphragm regulator.

I tried one of the really cheap HVLP systems like Charles is talking about and it took one try with a test board and WB finish to find out I'd never lay a nice film finish down with it. The HF guns do a good job if you use them well.

I did some casework (not large, medium sized) and literally used the junky 110v HF compressor and the HF gun with WB finish and it came out great. The compressors are $100 (maybe a couple of bucks more now), they're oiled type and you can get a free replacement warranty for about $15 or something. I figured if I killed the compressor, I'd exchange it. I still haven't killed it about 5 years later. I don't use it much, but it works.

[Charles Neil]

David, I also have the HF gravity fed guns, they do well, if you get a good one, its kind of a catch 22 on that , I bought 4 , for classes and to use with dyes and stains, 3 did well , 1 not so well.

[David Weaver]

Hopefully it was one of the cheap ones that was bad. I could tolerate throwing $15 in the trash, but maybe not $50. For those of us close to an HF store, they'll take anything back for just about any reason, and exchange it. For anyone not so close, might not be worth the trouble for $15.

The lack of a diaphragm regulator is annoying, though, most beginners and seldom-sprayer types (like me) can keep everything in check a lot easier by having the regulator right at the gun. No fooling around with the compressor then.

[art pfenn]

The problem is that if you want a nice finish you have to have the right set up. The tip alone on my Walcom Slim was $100 dollars. One size tip will not work with all finishes so you need several tips. When you say experiment does that mean you are trying to find anything that will shoot paint or varnish with a minimum of pressure?

[Rich Engelhardt]

When you say experiment does that mean you are trying to find anything that will shoot paint or varnish with a minimum of pressure?

Correct. I want to play around with a HVLP spray gun to see if it's possible to get a satisfactory finish with an extreme minimal cost.

Way way way back - as in 45 years ago way back, the big rage was flocked Christmas trees. Prior to aerosol cans of flocking, a company came out with a flocking kit.
It had a quart sized plastic spray "gun" that ran off a vacuum cleaner. You added water to the white powdered flocking and sprayed it on.
We carried it at the paint store I worked in back in the late 1960's/early 1970's. It was all old discontinued stock at that time. The flocking craze had died out years before that.
Paint stores in the Winter are like income tax places in the Summer - no customers and a lot of free time for the people that work there.
The company tried to drum up some Winter business with the flocking idea. It worked - and - the company ordered tons of the kits and extra flock.
The the flocking came out in aerosol cans, which hurt, and then when the craze ended, we were stuck with a bunch.

One slow Winter day, I got the bright idea that if the guns could spray a water/powdered flock mix, they might be able to shoot paint.
Paint was something we had a lot of..we had a river full of junk material I could play around with.
I fiddled around with all sorts of materials (latex enamel to converted epoxies to everything in between).

I sprayed everything in the warehouse that stood still long enough to get sprayed. Wood and metal racks, walls, hand truck, "Florance" ( somebody had nick named our tow motor Florance),,,you name it.
Once I got things down pat, the store manager had me spray the office furniture and file cabinets so we could use them as samples to show what the "spray gun" could do.

The office stuff turned out looking really good. It looked nearly as good as a factory finish.
We had a half dozen to 10 smaller painting contractors that bought the stock of kits we had, just to get the "spray gun".
It was fun/good times. I was pretty much the "newbie" at the time & those guys (the pro painters) had some issues with asking advice from and/or being waited on by "the kid".
After that though, things were a whole lot better. The same guys that wouldn't give me the time of day wanted one on one instrcution on how to use the sprayer.

Anyhow - sorry for the long winded walk down memory lane....

Yep - all I want here is something cheap to play with.

[Curt Harms]

My Earlex 5000 uses an ametek motor/blower setup which is also common in vacuums. I wonder what would happen if you could pipe the output of a shop vac into an Earlex gun? I know shop vacs have high 'suck', I wonder how many p.s.i. 'blow' they generate? The Earlex gun alone is over $100 so that still wouldn't be the bargain setup you're looking for. Charles Neil is right though, I don't think I'd want to go any lower on the quality scale for a turbine HVLP setup than Earlex. Harbor Freight sells several HVLP guns and used to sell one that was the twin of the Porter-Cable PSH1 which had a pretty decent rep. I have no idea about HF's current product line. If you just want to play, you're not going to come close to HF s prices and some of their guns get decent reviews. I think you can get additional needle/air cap kits for at least some HF guns but I have no idea how much of a wait you'd have between ordering and getting. Harbor Freight ain't Grizzly when it comes to customer service.

My understanding of HVLP is that the max pressure at the gun tip can't exceed 10 p.s.i. and still be considered HVLP. Conversion guns reduce the pressure at the inlet about 3:1 so not more than 30 p.s.i. at the gun inlet. The Earlex gun runs at some ridiculously low pressure setting like 2 p.s.i. I suspect the reason they work pretty well even with somewhat viscous materials is that they tap some air going thru the gun to pressurize the cup.

[Rich Engelhardt]

I wonder how many p.s.i. 'blow' they generate?

Same here.
I can't really find any real concrete info on it or figure out some cheap/easy/down & dirty way to best guess it.
I guess for now - since the HF coupon has expired - I'll just back burner the idea and keep looking.