I’m going to be buying an air compressor to power a nail gun for work on a house my wife and I just moved into. I’m hoping to kill two birds with one stone and get one that I could also use for an airbrush. (Sneaky, huh?)
The nail gun wants a 75-200psi supply. Would a 200psi compressor with a regulator work well for airbrushing? Or should I get something beefier? Or should I tend towards the lower 150psi - ish side? Or is this just way too big and I’d need a smaller one for airbrushing?
Thanks
You can use a general purpose air compressor for airbrushing, so long as you have a decent regulator and a moisture trap. I use Polly Scale paints, and rarely airbrush above 20-25 PSI. Most other paints require no more than this pressure range, or at most 40 PSI. A decent regulator will allow you to choke down the air flow out of the airbru***o where it needs to be.
Don’t forget the airbrush air hose adapter from Badger!
Wow,
200 psi?! Like Orsonroy said, the pressures you will be working with on an airbrush will be in the neighborhood of 20 or less. I only got up to 20 psi when I used the old floquil lacquers back in the day. Even the testors enamels can easily be sprayed at 15-20. You will need to get a really good quality regulator, and I mean one that can read 1 psi or 2 psi increments. Personally, if you are serious about this, I would consider a two stage regulator when airbrushing. One to get down into the ball park then one to make minute increments. Plus, make sure you use a braided airbrush hose and not those cheap plastic/rubber ones.