At 2:30 am, when I should be sleeping, but am thinking about the car... I got this idea to buy a cheap camping tent to setup in my garage as a temporary "paint booth". Most guys use a plastic sheeting lining their entire garage. Would the tent keep the paint overspray from getting into the garage? or is it too porous? This would of course be a cheap, Academy tent, stand-up height, maybe 6' square, no mesh windows, maybe $30. Just for doing fenders, doors, etc. Not for the entire car.
I painted a car long time ago ... I bought one of those portable carport things. I just used the frame ... covered it with tarps and stuck a fan at one end to suck out the fog ...
I had been thinking about the tarps, as well. Trying to keep it cheap, simple, and disposable. Even if I could reuse the frame and replace the tarp. Best, if I could buy a $30 tent, put a fan in a window, and just toss it at the end of the day and get a new one. I am just not sure that the tent would contain the overspray, but I don't see why not I just need to paint a door and fender right now. Might toss in a hood, trunklid, and the other door and fender if it works alright. Then have the rest of the car professionally painted.
I don't think you can get a tent big enough for $30.00 that will hold a car and allow you room to work,the plastic will work just fine and its desposable,a tent tends to be dark and can hide light so as to trick you into thinking you have the car covered with paint.if you have a garage or large area you can get some 2x2's and make a frame then cover with plastic and stick a fan in a cut out to exhaust the paint overspray and go to town on painting...jmo good luck!!
wayne brings up a good point though. the light in a tent would be very misleading. and you'd have to have enough room to move around the object with all your eguipment and not snag anything.
The 2X2 frame sounds like a good idea. It would be semi-permanent, and I just staple up some plastic each time I paint. I would have to have a second set of flourescent bulbs (if I hung the lights inside the frame), and try to keep the "paint set" clean as possible with acetone. Any ideas for catching overspray at, or before the fan, so I am not polluting the neigborhood? When I worked in the machine shops, we had a fan blowing through large paper filters to prevent blowing it all out into the world...of course, they were usually clogged up and useless anyway...
You're just bringing more color into the world! I paid something like $20 for plastic from home depot and it covered the entire floor and hung from the ceiling. I didn't have a ton of overspray when I did mine. I just put a window fan in the garage, and I didn't turn anything outside red. There's also a trick you can do to cut down on overspray. When the paint comes out, it is charged with static electricity. I think if you hook the ( - ) side of a battery up to the part you're painting it will make the paint stick really well. Almost no overspray. Maybe it's the ( + ) side. hhhhmmmm... I can't remember. Well at any rate, just don't complete the circuit and you can fiddle with it and see which one works best without catching anything on fire or melting anything.
I feel much better now Actually, I would like to hear more about this. I have the front fender off, and will be swapping out the door soon, but do not have the rubber stuff yet (window seals, rubber bumpers, etc.)... I might install the door without window and rubber (since it is so much lighter that way), get it straight, then add the rest later. So, I can paint soon... I have a new HVLP gravity fed paint gun, and just can't wait to use it
sorry I over read his need. you can cut down on overspray by wetting the floor with water, and put an a/c filter in front of the fan,it will help catching the paint dust and its cheap! the plastic is by far the cheapest and easiest way to go,you don't have to change it every time, just lightly wash it with the hose or swish it with a broom and get the dust off it, then blow it with an air nozzle.
When I paint I do not use an exhaust fan. If you suck air out of your make shift paint booth, air will be sucked in from somewhere else. Even if you try putting filters on the intake side, unless you have a completely sealed room, you will suck trash in along with the air. I just paint in the fog. With a siphon feed standard gun, I've shot 3 coats of color and 4 of clear. It gets real foggy in there but not so bad that you cant see what your doing. The plus side is there is vertually no trash in my paint. I hope to have less fog from now on with the new HVLP gun I just bought.
Built my own exhaust fan thats filtered.. used a 24inx 24in floor fan($9.00).. then made L shaped light guage metal brackets to fasten to the sides and bottom of the fan.. I used pop rivets.. then slid in 3 filters for a home furnace.. The 3 filters stop any paint from exiting my garage. of course I put water on the floor.works great and when your not painting the 3 filters can be pulled up from the top and the fan can be used to circulate the air in your garage on hot days.. Works for me
I've always heard not to wet the floor because the water would evaporate and get into the paint, or something like that. Maybe not evaporate but cause the humidity to go up? Can't remember....
A wet floor usually will have puddles and can splash water on lower parts if not careful. I usually mop the floor the day before with the car in there so everything will be dry the day I shoot it.
I think it's called electrostatic spray painting. The ones I've seen on the internet use an electrode at the tip of the gun to add extra charge to the paint. Adding an opposite charge to the item you're painting does the same thing, only you'll have one spot that doesn't get painted where your wire is connected. You can read up on it to get a better idea of the theory behind it. If you want to try it out, I would start out in the driveway or something, because any sparks in a sealed room full of atomized paint probably won't end very well. Anyway, If you can connect the ( + ) end of the battery to your gun and the ( - ) end to your part then in theory it should work pretty well. I wouldn't suggest using a car battery. A 9 volt should do the same thing. You can wire two little 9 volts in series and have an 18 volt for even more paint attracting power! As far as ventilation goes, I always used a double filter mask (course and fine) and a simple window fan and even then I couldn't stay out there for too long before the colors started to look funny. My snot was always the color I'm painting too. That's kind of gross now that I think about it. I couldn't imagine how much worse it would be with no ventilation. You do want to suck air from a clean room if at all possible. It's also better for the air to come in from the floor rather than the ceiling. No sense in fighting gravity if you don't have to. I go over the surface I'm painting really well with a tack rag before I put the next coat down and it seems to work pretty well at keeping the paint clean and dust free. Of course, if I had an actual paint booth it would be better. Anyway, I like to sand the color before I put down the clear, just to get it super flat and that normally takes care of anything that was in the surface too. Same thing goes for single stage. The HVLP gun will cut down on the overspray too. The siphon feed HVLP I used didn't throw around too much paint.
