HVLP Recommendations

Hi folks

Well, after getting some quotes to paint my -8, all with WAAYYY too many zeros in them, I've decided to bite the bullet and paint the thing myself. In fact, three of us are going to split the cost of an HVLP unit and paint our RVs.

Now, I know quite a few of you guys and gals have painted your own aircraft. If you used an HVLP system, :

1) Which system did you use ?
2) Good points of the system ?
3) Bad points ?
4) Gotcha's
5) Recommedations.

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. We are planning to pick up the HVLP unit at Osh this year, as we figure we'll get the best deal there.

Thanks a bunch,

I have a Citation HVLP system. It comes with a very nice gun, 40 feet of air hose for the gun and 40 for the fresh air mask, the half face mask with flex hose and belt. I added the hood and get plenty of extra lense protectors for the hood. You need at least one per paint session, sometimes several. Also the whip hose for the gun is nice 'cause the paint hose is stiff and heavy.

Get tyvex paint suits or old clothes.

I have a # 1.0 mm needle and orfice in mine. A 1.2 mm will give you more paint, but may be a bit much for a novice. A "pink coat" followed by three medium coats gave me good results. Using Aerothane with 20 minutes between coats was very easy. I never used spray equipment before I painted my SeaRey in 2000. The next time was 2004 on my RV-7A. My airport neighbor is painting his Tailwind using my Citation and having good results. He never sprayed before either (except rattle cans), so the learning curve can't be too difficult.


Aircraft Technical Support can furnish all you needs and expert advice.
Jim and Dondi Miller are at EAA every year in the Poly Fiber Booth.

Good luck. You can Do it!!

Roberta

Note the nice Madrid Red shoes!!

HVLP Advice... for what it's worth

I wanted to paint my plane because there were few local options, and of course the high costs. I saw the results of a couple local shops and figured I could do at-least that well.
I started off the painting project with a turbine fed gun, and it worked ok, but later learned of an air-hose fed, gravity fed cup version that I found attractive. It had a couple features I found interesting - you could get cup liners that would speed up clean up!, and it also would allow you to effectively paint upside down! The gun was a lot lighter and easier to handle during long painting sessions... overall I am real glad I moved away from the quart type cup gun with the turbine feed. One big problem I found with the turbine guns was that the turbines will heat up the air feed to the point where you will need to add some? additional amount of reducer to your paint to keep it from flashing off too quickly - causing orange pealing.
Of course, keep safety in mind, and remember that with most of the modern auto/aircraft paints... you ABSOLUTLY need to have a full face FRESH AIR RESPIRATOR - and NOTHING LESS! (ask me how I know this?)
Other painting advice I would toss at you would be:
Pick a product line and stay completely with it.
Learn all you can about the process, and practice!
After you are done, and you did a good job, you will see why it costs so much!
Paint booths don't have to be fancy, but clean air flow is important, I installed a commercial grade "explosion proof" exhaust fan in my garage - moves lots of air!
The more LIGHT the better... think I had over 6000 watts of light going and still could have used more!
A couple base colors and some vinyl graphics from "Freedom Graphics" keeps the detailed masking to a minimum... saves time and frustrations!
Good luck... if you have questions - dwittman_at_sonoma-county.org
Here is what mine turned out like:
http://www.eaa.org/homebuilders/list/2RV-6_Wittman.asp#TopOfPage
(guess I need to study this system further, tried to just attach a pic. but it wanted a web link, so threw this one in... hope you can see it.)