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I’ll be spraying em6000 soon. The last time I did it I cleaned my gun after each shooting session. So, basically painted, cleaned gun, waited a few more mins and just kept doing that haha.
Is it necessary to clean after every session? Could I seal it in a ziplock or something until it’s time to shoot again? It just seems the process isn’t her time efficient, it if it’s what is needed.....


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Are you completely disassembling the gun each time?

I rinse my gun between sessions and do a thorough cleaning after the last coat goes on. It takes less than a minute to flush the gun or at least the detail gun I use. I find that if I don’t rinse the gun each time it looses efficiency maybe due to slight material buildup at the fluid tip? Try not rinsing it for 3-4 sessions and see what you think. I also wait at least an hour between coats, 3 wet mils, 70°, and 45% RH.

Best, M

Yes:)


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With either waterborn or solvent lacquer I do take the time (probably five minutes) to clean my gun each time I use it. I keep a plastic container with some lacquer thinner in it and a little baby food jar for the left over lacquer. Dump the gun out, unscrew the cup and clean it in the thinner, set it on a paper towel. Drop the screen in the thinner, pull the needle out and unscrew the nozzle, drop everything in and wash the gun itself. I leave everything apart until I'm ready to use it next (or put it away).

With water born I disassemble and clean in warm water, then I put it back together and put a little DA in the cup and just shoot that against a paper towel. If I know I'm going to be shooting more in an hour or so I just leave some DA in the gun and use that to check the spray pattern. That seems to get all the water out and I've never had problems with rust.

I know it isn't necessary, I know lots of people who just hang the gun up with finish in the cup until the next coat, but as I said, it only takes a few minutes and since I've been doing this I've never had a cranky gun.

For me the rub with full disassembly after each coat is that I had my gun adjusted. Now I’ve got to d*ck around with getting it dialed in again. I know it’s pretty quick to get it dialed in, but it’s still gonna take longer to dial it in than the 30 seconds it takes to spray a coat. If I was leaving the gun overnight I’d fully disassembled. If I’m shooting back to back coats, a rinse is plenty.

I flush my gun with soapy warm water between sessions and do a strip down and thorough cleaning at the end of the day.
Tip of he day - use an old toothbrush and warm water to clean the nozzle between spraying top / sides / back to prevent waterbase building up on the tip and ruining you day.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I spray nitro and am probably on the more lazy end of the spectrum. I usually let the gun sit overnight and really only clean it up once in the middle of the schedule and more thoroughly at the end. It hardly ever causes any issues and if it does it is easy to fix.

Yeah, but nitro dissolves in solvent after it dries, EM6000 doesn't dossolve in water after it dries, big difference....

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Colin, right you are. I once did a guitar with EM6000 and certainly was more aggressive with the cleaning. I think I sprayed some water through the gun after every coat. I use the PPS cup system so I could take off the finish cup off and then squirt some water into the adapter while pulling the trigger. Easy peasy.

What Colin said, exactly. Nitro can be left for days, no problem. You may get away with not flushing the gun with waterbornes briefly but when it does clog it can only be removed mechanically. I find that spraying warm water and back flushing to be a good short term solution. By back flushing I mean holding a cloth tightly over the air and fluid outlet and pulling the trigger. This helps wash any remaining finish back into the cup. Empty the cup and repeat several times. If I won't be spraying for several days I disassemble the business parts and clean with brush and warm soapy water.
You can get away with not cleaning.... til you don't.

For coatings like this you must clean your gun completely within the coating manufacturer's "pot life" window or by their other recommendations.

From the EM 6000 TDS "Rinse spray gun fluid handing equipment thoroughly with water after each use."

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

I use EM6000. I usually spray 4 coats a day with about half an hour between coats. I do nothing to the gun between coats other than wiping the nozzle clean with my finger. At the end of the day, I clean out the gun first by pouring out all of the lacquer, rinsing everything and scrubbing out the cup. I then fill the cup with hot water and let it run through the gun (increasing the feed makes this faster—I have the proper adjustment marked on the knob with a sharpie so I can put it back. I remove the aircap and blow it out (no lacquer remains in the little orifices). I hook the gun back up to the air supply and spray about a teaspoon of alcohol through it. That’s usually all it takes. A batch of guitars usually takes me three days on this schedule. After a few batches (many days months apart), I go deeper into the gun and pick out any residue that may have hardened in the corners. Sometimes, some residue remains on the shaft of the needle where it passes outside of the gun. That makes the needle stick, so I have to remove it and clean it with alcohol.

Here's a spray gun story. Back in the 1970's I was given a Binks model 7 spray gun. I think they might have been designed to spray suspension bridges or skyscrapers. ! The old 1 quart cup kind. Those things were indestructible. It actually worked fine. I never, and I mean never cleaned it. It just hung on the wall full of nitro until I needed it.Once in while I might have needed to scrape dry lacquer off the tip. I had been using it for 7 or 8 years when I moved to Hawaii. Eventually lacquer began to drip out of the packing on the trigger, and that was annoying. It was so gummed up at that point that I was afraid I'd destroy it trying to get it apart, so I sent it to Binks in Seattle for maintenance. The guy at Binks called me and gave me a long lecture on how important it was to clean my equipment every time I used it.. He told me it was gonna cost a whopping $50, including shipping, to get it fixed. I just laughed and told him I was never gonna clean my gun again. For that price, I'd just send it to him in other 10 years. Unfortunately, these new HVLP guns we have, and I've tried them all, are pretty persnickety. I have to give my Fuji's a cursory cleaning almost everyday. I use gravity feed guns now and I think they take a lot more care than cup guns, but they do a better finish.

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“ The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away” Pablo Picasso