Spraying rustoleum,what gun?

[HankRearden]

Tonight I thinned some rustoleum semi gloss black and tried spraying from a couple different guns. The 2.0 top suction feed gun left a crappy ,heavy finish with my minimal skill. Then I tried an old ampro hvlp. It was much nicer but still not quite there.
I'm hesitant to run rustoleum through my devilbiss finishline plus. Although I realize it is a cheapie compared to pro guns its good enough for me. and try to keep it mint for spraying base.
Can anyone recommend a cheap gun? Harbor freight purple,green or any of their myriad of guns? Something else cheap that will lay down a nice finish with lack of skill and crappy paint?
Am I being dumb about my devilbiss?

 

[WAYNE0]

if you have a Harbor Freight near you buy there cheapest hvlp. Yea dont use your devilbiss. Try reducing it. Reduce it with what ever the can says. I dont remember

 

[harrisonm]

As long as you THOROUGHLY clean the Devilbiss afterwards, there is no reason why you cannot use it. I have a Devilbiss Finish Line FLG4 I use for primer, a Devilbiss SRI Pro touchup gun and a Iwata Super Nova gun I use for base and clear. Every time I use them, I completely disassemble them for a thorough cleaning. That is the only way to properly clean a gun in my opinion.

 

[ACME SS]

I just sprayed my neighbors RAM pickup box (inside) with rust oleum farm and implement paint last evening. If you search online there is a data sheet much like for automotive paint that gives way more information than the label.

Per the instructions, I thinned it down with acetone 15% which is 140ml/qt (my pps disposable cup are in metric only) . I used a 3m accuspray hvlp gun with a 1.8mm air cap (didn't try any other sizes as this cap worked great so no need to dirty another). I had about 30 psi at the inlet . Oh and I was able to spray this in one coat, over a black Direct To Metal epoxy primer. It took the full quart plus 140 ml of acetone to do this...right down to the last drop. I have seen videos where they do a light mist coat, then a medium, then a wet coat but since I was doing this outside and ash is dropping from the sky from wild fires, I didn't want to have it tacky 3 times and accumulate all that crap. With the acetone, it does dry quicker than if you were to use mineral spirits.

On a side note, I waited till evening because if I were to have painted in the morning, full sun would have probably caused problems with the drying paint.

This paint is simply an oil base. It is not epoxy or 2 part hardened. Guns clean easily with mineral spirits, acetone, you name it. I would use any gun with this as it will not harm it if you clean it. To prove my point, I accidently was wearing my Garmin GPS watch. It was COVERED in tacky white paint and I was sick about it. A quick wipe of mineral spirits and it actually looks better than it has for months! Good luck!

 

[ragtopfury]

This June, I painted my Dakota with Rustoleum and a Harbor Freight purple gun at 35psi. Very slight orange peel. Maybe cut the inlet air pressure down next time? I got the 5-footer I was going for, as this will be a daily driver and Drivers Ed truck for my soon to be 15 yr old son.

 

[jbc426]

Tonight I thinned some rustoleum semi gloss black and tried spraying from a couple different guns. The 2.0 top suction feed gun left a crappy ,heavy finish with my minimal skill. Then I tried an old ampro hvlp. It was much nicer but still not quite there.
I'm hesitant to run rustoleum through my devilbiss finishline plus. Although I realize it is a cheapie compared to pro guns its good enough for me. and try to keep it mint for spraying base.
Can anyone recommend a cheap gun? Harbor freight purple,green or any of their myriad of guns? Something else cheap that will lay down a nice finish with lack of skill and crappy paint?
Am I being dumb about my devilbiss?

Paints should flow out and level when sprayed. This requires them to be thin or reduced enough to flow AND to remain thin long enough for this to happen, which requires the thinner to evaporate slow enough to allow flow out.

Temperature plays a key role in this process. Once the thinner's flash off, the paint will begin to cure. Your material flashed off before it was able to flow out. That indicates to me that you needed a slower evaporating(flash off) thinner.

As long as the gun you are using can atomize properly and control the amount of material and have an equalized pattern resulting in a usable spray fan, the gun you use is not really that critical.

I use generic lacquer thinner to clean my guns. Recently, I used a catylized low gloss black chassis paint from Summit Racing on a project. Various temperature thinners are available depending on the conditions you have. It was spring here and the thinner i used should have been slightly faster than the one I chose. It dried slowly even with the catalyst, but did not run too easily.

It's a balancing act to get material thinned correctly, applied at the right mil thickness and sprayed evenly with no thin or heavy areas. Some paints will orange peel anyway. Color sanding and polishing can be used to alter the surface finish to address that. Metallic paints are harder yet to get right.

 

[67Dart440GT]

You need a smaller fluid tip to break the product up. Viscosity matters as well but a 1.6-1.8 is a primer tip. Try a 1.3 or 1.4 and I am sure you will have better results. Cranking air pressure to atomize does nothing but ruin transfer efficiency. Most guns will say exactly what the recommended max air pressure is. After those max pressures are reached your transfer efficiency goes below 60%.