I’ve recently added a spray booth to my workbench and now I have some questions for those of you who have experience with them.
How do you clean it? Mine has paint “dust” that has accumulated. It won’t quite brush off; should I try scraping it or use some kind of paint thinner or even remover to clean it?
How often do you clean / replace the filter and what alternative filter materials are there that can be effectively used?
I will most certainly appreciate your advice & suggestions.
The whole purpose of a spray booth is to collect the overspray and exhaust the fumes. I change-out the newspaper on the bottom every once in a while, but haven’t ever cleaned it in its more-than-forty-year-existence.
I suppose you could use a shop vac to remove any loose, stuff, as you might get when changing the filter, but not much point in trying to clean off hardened paint.
I use fibreglass furnace filters in mine, and change them when they look like they need to be changed - takes about 5 seconds.
I only cleaned mine up a bit once so far. IIRC I just used some paint thinner on a cloth. Not sure.
My inexpensive booth came with a 2-layer filter, fiberglass I would guess. I could tell the original was restricting air flow. I bought the following item that was similar (polyester fiber) and notes one use is for paint booths. It is thicker than the original but can be stuffed into place, after cutting to size. For me the $11 roll should be a lifetime supply.
My booth is lined with thin sheet aluminum. If I don’t let it get too bad, I just wipe it clean with some thinners on a rag. I change out the filter once I can see that it is started to get a clogged appearance, but long before it’s plugged !
Likewise, mine is lined with a layer of Tyvek® sheet on three sides. Tyvek is overkill but it was available to me free so I didn’t pass on it. You could easily use waxed paper, aluminum foil (heavier stuff), “house-wrap” which is similar to Tyvek or perhaps parchment paper or similar tacked in place with double-side tape or even Velcro dots.
I hesitate to suggest kraft paper or newspaper for the sides since it tends to collect dust that may wind up on your models. I do use kraft paper to place at the bottom of the booth but I discard this quite frequently.
In terms of paint accumulating on the inside of the booth, I don’t clean mine either. Why bother? The paint won’t affect anything.
However, I do make sure that the booth is totally dust free before using it. Not removing the dust is a recipe for disaster!
As far as the filter goes, I use a 16"x16" furnace filter and it works great. To date there has been almost no paint on the fan blades. I do find that the filters clog fairly quickly so they get changed on a regular basis. One way I test how badly the filter is clogged is to start the fan and then remove the filter. If there is a noticable increase in the fan speed then the filter needs to be replaced, even though it may not looked totally clogged.
This week I went to get furnace filters 20’‘x16’‘x1’', you know those fiberglass element type, cheap. Well went to two of my Supply Co. and none in stock, only the pleated type.
Now my spray booth was built around a 12’‘x24’‘x1’’ fiberglass type cheap filter. Now I need to look for and try to stock up on the fiberglass ones for the spray booth. I hope I hope I hope.
Always a Monkey wrench thrown in somewhere by someone.
So if you use fiberglass filters, start looking for them now, maybe their going to be a thing of the past. Like HO code 100 brass track on fiber ties. You see one day as a young child I went to the Dr.s and he said I needed more fiber, so I told my mom the Dr. said I needed to touch more fiber, so I showed mom a piece of Model Railroad track at the LHS made with fiber ties…as they say, ''The rest is History".
Oh, how often do I clean my booth? News paper on the bottom, news paper on the sides held up with magnets, yes a sheet metal booth. I can do sheetmetal work, folders, benders and shears so I built it around the filter and external fan. So… when ever it looks sloppy.
I put these test ports on mine to be able to check differential pressure before and after the secondary air filter to atmosphere, but now in hindsight that seemed like a lot of overkill.
A hundred dollar solution to a ten cent problem.
I also use 12 by 24 filters in my spray booth, and all that is available around here are the pleated paper elements.
I saw the fiberglass elements in the stores when I was designing it, but now they are only stocked in the 20 by 20 size.
I made the mistake of trying to spray some sprues of roundhouse windows in my indoor workshop. Dianne didn’t complain about the smell too much, but what I hadn’t taken into account was where the overspray would settle. I was holding the sprues inside a five gallon pail. Unfortunately the overspray drifted onto my brand new leather briefcase which I had purchased to transport paperwork to the club and back. Even though the briefcase was a few feet away it got a nice light white coating that was enough to make it look like a piece of crap![banghead][D)][|(]
I want to thank you for your post regarding the fibreglass filters. I checked my stock (I use 11"x20" filters, cut-in-half for my homemade spray booth) and found only three of the pre-cut filters. I hopped in the car, and took a five minute drive to the nearby TSC store. Almost every filter on the shelves was the pleated paper type - I could see those becoming clogged completely even in a short session of airbrushing.
Fortunately, there were two three-packs of 20"x24" fibreglass filters languishing on the bottom shelf of the display. I’ll cut them up to fit my filter holder, which will add 24 more to the 3 which I had on-hand.
That should be more than enough for the amount of painting I still need to do…I’ve never really measured it, but I believe that I usually get about 10 to 15 hours of painting from each new filter.
Of course they will be clogged if ewe doo it dat way!
The filter and the vent belong ABOVE the spray box, NOT in the back where they get hit with direct spray. The are to vent the box, not become part of that backdrop!
