Accuspray Turbine and Latex Paint

[Jeff]

Hi I am trying to spray latex paint using a #10 gun and capspray 9100 turbine. The best spray pattern I have found is a .043 nozzle and a #5 air cap. Larger nozzles and air caps were tried but the gun did not atomize as well. Any thoughts on this. thanks

[Preston Andreas]

I have the Graco 4-stage turbine. I am not sure of accuspray's sizes, but I called tech at Graco when I sprayed latex and I found that just like the tech said using a large tip (2.5 mm) is not the answer because you don't have enough available air to atomize the higher output of the viscous paint. I ended up thinning about 12% and added floetrol. I used a 1.8 millimeter nozzle as was suggested with the next smallest air cap. It atomized fairly well, but you had to live with a low output. All this was explained to me by the tech guy and sure enough when I tried it all out, he was right. You trade off output for atomization. I was spraying doors and I could spray at only about an inch or two a second to get enough paint for a wet coat. However, it flowed out very flat and even with the thinning and floetrol, the sheen was still the same.

You can thin it enough to get it to work with the large nozzle, but you are going to lose the sheen and you probably are degrading the integrity of the paint.

Preston