Hi guys!
I’m thinking of building a simple paint booth. But I don’t know how to start. Please give me suggestions or point me to good places on the net with pictures. I will use Polly Scale acrylics most of the times.
Thanks in advance.
Mine is composed of a big cardboard box I got out of a furniture store dumpster and a $10.00 box fan that I bought at Walmart.
All I did was cut the bottom and top out of the box, taped the fan to the box with duct tape so that it’s blowing away from the box and placed it on my work bench with the fan to the open window, and wa la!. Cheap paint booth…
Tracklayer
Sounds easy…
I just read somewhere on the net that it’s possible to use a filter that catches the grease and releases the air back into the room. This can be used with a water trap. The device channels the air into a little container with water in it. What happens is the air hits the water and the paint etc. gets trapped by the water. Every so often this has to be cleaned out. It takes out 90% of the paints and fumes.
I see in the Peterbuilt factory the blow the air down onto water under the spray booth. It catches all the paint overspray. Not sure how they extract it?!
just my [2c] worth.
Regards,
Nigel
I made one many years ago from half inch plywood. Added a bathroom fan at the top rear, vented the exhaust out a nearby window through an insert. I have a fine fibreglass filter in front of the fan intake. Bathroom fans are non sparking, so there is no problem with paint. Been using it for about 20 years now, mostly with Floquil paint.
I painted the insides white for better visibility, and line the back and bottom with some newspaper. When it gets too dirty, I replace it. Have an undercounter fluorescent lamp inside so I can see what I’m doing. Works for me.
Take a look at a previous question on a paint (spray) booth and the responses at:
DO NOT USE ANY ORDINARY ELECTRIC FAN IF YOU ARE GOING TO USE ANYTHING BUT WATER BASED PAINTS!!! THIS INCLUDES BATHROOM FANS!!! Common fans DO create sparks and volitile paints, such as Floquil, can combust!! Industrial supply houses sell “Explosion Proof” fans & small spray booths, but they are not inexpensive. If you use only water based paints, the above suggestions will work. An ordinary furnace filter will catch most of the overspray, and is cheap enough to throw away from time to time, but don’t use Floquil, laquers, etc.!! A good friend lost a building some years ago by spraying with an ordinary fan as the exhaust![:O]
I’m a custom painter and I built mine pretty much the same way with the same kind of fan, my “box” is about 18"x20" (large enough to paint most O scale) and I use a standard 18x20" furnace filter. Mine is a permanent installation in my basement workshop, so I used a 4" flexible dryer hose that runs up the stairwell to vent through the outside studwall using a dryer vent. Caution: make sure the vent’s bug screen is intact, a colonie of yellowjackets took up residence in my hose one spring! If you have a window nearby, you can make a plywood insert with a hose flange or vent and attach the hose to that, or of course during warm weather, you can just stick the hose out the window.
I used scrap plywood to build the 5 sided box and the (cheapest) fan, hose, vent and hose clamps cost about $25. I’ve been using it for 20 years and just replaced the fan a couple of years ago (I paint a lot).
I also have a lazy-susan in the booth along with some block and assorted jigs for holding locos etc. In the case of the photo I was in the process of painting 250 N scale Kato cars into the action red scheme and it was just more expedient to hold them. In the lower lefthand corner you can
I will second this notion! The easiest way around this is to have the fan supplying air to an air inductor. This will create a negative pressure in the booth and pump air out of hte booth without the paint entrained air ever touching or coming near the fan. Thus, no explosion hazard.
Also, using a Brushless DC or Induction type AC Fan will eleminate the explosion hazard.
Additionally, if you could make the booth small enough to be portable… just do all your painting outside of any building you would rather not lose to an explosion.
Bathroom fans ARE induction motors, no brushes, no sparks. That’s why I use and suggest using them. Been using one for twenty years.
Um, okay. I am glad for you that you haven’t had any problems. But people should know that not all bathroom exhaust fans are Induction motor driven. Unless the stator and rotor are both canned, even an induction motor can spark, and that is why I recommend using an air induction style setup if one is truely concerned about an explosion hazard.
I’ve been using one as well for around the same amount of time. I’ve probably had over 500 model cars and trucks roll through my paint booth with no problems.