Category — Getting Equipped For Water

Gun Cleaning Equipment

Proper cleaning of your new dedicated spray gun is also a consideration you will need to look at, water resins tend to stick to metal gun parts more so than solvent resins do. Immediate cleaning of your spray gun is recommended using a waterborne cleaning solvent such as PPG’s One Choice SWX 100. This product contains an ideal combination of water, solvent and detergent to thoroughly remove the water borne resin from the spray gun. Several manufacturers have specific gun cleaners dedicated for the use of cleaning your water borne spray gun. Uni-Ram has some excellent waterborne gun cleaners on the market. Drester also makes a great water borne gun cleaner.

These are the two I personally recommended for your shop. Some employ the use of PPG’s flocculating powder that, when added to the cleaning waste, separates the pigment and the solids from the water. Another point to consider here, waterborne requires a different waste stream. Contact your local waste disposal company for the proper way to dispose of your waterborne waste. However the use of these flocculating agents, if used correctly, can effectively recycle the liquid up to ten times minimizing your waste disposal costs.

Stay tuned for the next article on air flow equipment needed for PPG’s Envirobase HP.

We have discussed the quality of PPG water borne paint here on the Blog. Some of you may be wondering what kind of equipment you will need to convert your body shop. This article will answer all your questions regarding shop equipment. The conversion to waterborne basecoats will positively impact your day to day shop operations and your equipment. Fortunately the changes will not be too intimidating. On the bright side they will help make your life easier and more productive as well.

The best feature of the new PPG waterborne system is that there is no mechanical agitation required to achieve great color matches. This is a result of PPG’s revolutionary new anti-settle technology. Simply rock the toner side to side by hand and that’s all that is required to ensure the tint has all the pigments dispersed evenly and then it is ready to pour. This makes color mixing fast and easy. No longer does a painter need to wait fifteen minutes when changing a toner or upon arriving to work in the morning, just shake and pour. What does this mean then, this means no more loud mixing machine in your paint room adding extra noise to your work day and no more wait times decreasing your daily production. We get paid to paint vehicles not stand around playing the waiting game. Think about the time you will save during the course of a year.

A dedicated spray gun used exclusively for water borne base coat. PPG recommends using a dedicated paint gun for waterborne base coats and should not be used with solvent based paints, just as you do not use your base coat gun to spray clear coat. I know what you probably thinking, we will have to buy more spray guns for our shop. Not when you switch to PPG’s Envirobase. PPG is going to give their existing shops and their new clients a dedicated waterborne gun. If your shop has two booths than you will receive two paint guns, one dedicated paint gun per booth. While we understand you could make one of your existing paint guns a waterborne gun, considerations should be given to the technology improvements manufacturers have made with this most valuable tool. The spray gun must be rust proof, which means it should be made of stainless steel, brass or plastic components. Many spray gun manufactures have specific gun, cap and fluid tip recommendations. Since water and aluminum can cause corrosion, aluminum cups will be replaced by plastic cups or other systems such as 3M’s PPS system or the Sata RPS system which use plastic. The required strainer size for waterborne base is 125 micron.

Please come back to the Blog as I will elaborate on some of the other key pieces of equipment your shop will need to make the switch to PPG Envirobase waterborne basecoat. There are some other ingredients to make your shop the most productive most successful shop on the block.