Mike:
I will be glad to take your council as you seem all the way up to speed on this topic. I do >really< like my little Binks knock off, and in fact for $10 I am going over to HF to get another one today. I have been spraying a urethane industrial coating from Coronado that is supposed to be used in heavy industrial areas, and does not require priming except on flaking rust. I have used it before, and it is like shooting glue. A few uses and the gun is getting cranky, so for $10, I won't sweat it.
Here's my situation I would like for you to ponder. I am a remodel/repair contractor, and I do a lot of door only installations for a local lumberyard that sells a lot of metal doors. These folks want their doors painted, so I make an additional $$ to paint the door. Although it is done all the time around here, I can't stand latex on metal. When I hang an occasional wood door, I just brush them out.
When I know I am painting a metal door (front door, back door), I take my larger pancake (2 hp - 4.6 cfm @40 psi and 2.4 cfm at 90) and it will run the little gun just fine. Plenty of air, just the right amount of paint. If I mix/thin up 16 oz of paint in my sport bottle, it will spray two coats each side of a 3' door, which is perfect. I usually put in about 3 - 4 drops of Japan drier in the cup before spraying on colder, damper days and it works just fine.
When I spray burglar bars, that little gun is a champ. Remember that your average bars are made out of some kind of 1" frame with 1/2" bars and some kind of curly design in the middle. 1" fan, volume open all the way, it tears them up. Refilling is a little annoying, but compared to the days of when we used to hand brush those babies for hours, it is a blessing to have to refill. (The house I am finishing out right now has 20 sets on them, mostly large 6 to 8 ft wide and 5 ft tall to compliment the ranch style house).
OK.. I am gettin' around to my question.
Is there a larger capacity gun that I could run with my portable compressor? I often send my guys one way, and I go another as it doesn't take two of us to hang a door. Nor does it take two to paint. So I take all my equipment and haul it in the back of the truck, and when I go to the seedier parts of town I put the compressor in the front seat of the truck. Point being I have the biggest luggable I could get with the most power to match up to the best gun I could find to do the job. And after 30 years of doing this, I am not going to buy a bigger compressor to haul around.. my tired old butt just doesn't want to fool with unloading some monster at the end of the day.
So it there a gun that will do all the stuff this one will do that has higher resovoir capacity and will throw just a little more paint when spraying? I tend to build coats, so I get a lot of coverage - but I'll bet I filled that little gun ten times for all those bars. And they are now ready for their second coat. With the paint premixed, it actually only takes about a minute or two to release the cup and fill, but nonetheless I am always looking for something better.
Given my compressor limitation (the compressor has to go out to the job with me, completely, easily portable) do you know of a gun that will do what I want?
FWIW, I didn't get why some hair raised over you suggesting to search the archives here. Two things - you were quite civil. Not too long ago, many would just answer with DAGS. Nothing else.
The other thing some don't get is that the archives are the highest and best use of this NG. More practical info here than a library. And over the years faces, people, experiences, interests, etc. all change and that sometimes is reflected back over here. And as for all the questions that are the mainstay of this group (which table saw should I buy? has anyone used PC routers and are they any good? etc., etc.) I honestly think many don't know the archives are searchable.
Robert