What just happened? Paint 'boogers' in my gun

L

larryq

Hi everyone,

Never had this happen before. I was spraying some Auto Air blue-silver metallic paint with a 1.2 mm tip, at 30 psi and it came out so watery that it actually 'rained' instead of sprayed and was so non-viscous it flowed and puddled at the bottom of my workpiece after a couple of minutes, after a single coat. I was actually able to wipe the surface almost 100% clean with a lint-free towel after five minutes, it was that bad.

My workpiece is a bench vise that I had sprayed the day before with two medium coats of SPI epoxy primer, same as I always have.

I disassembled the gun and noticed bits of the paint had coagulated in the cup and gun passages, almost turned to the consistency of little rubber boogers, and it took me a while to brush and spray out the remnants with gun cleaner, it was sticking to the passages really good.

Have you ever seen this before and /or have any idea what went wrong? I've used this gun many times with metallic paint and never had an issue. When stirring and pouring the paint it appeared normal, and as always I strained it into the gun with a Devilbiss 190 micron (medium) filter so I don't think any contamination got in. Would love to know what may have happened. I sprayed with a water filter, desiccant and moisture trap in between the tank and the gun.
 
An update. I cleaned the gun thoroughly, re-shook the blue-silver metallic, sprayed again and the same thing happened. I then tried some Auto Air green pearl paint and that went on fine.

Next, I used some leftover Auto Air metallic green fastback paint from a prior project, and *it* ran as well. Here's a picture, the metallic is at the top, running like a faucet (photo taken 5 min after it was sprayed) while the green pearl is below and adhered fine. It may look ugly but that's because I wiped it a bit, and it's also an old test panel. I guess the metallic paint expires after a year or two, does that sound right, or is something else the culprit?

As for the boogers in the paint, that was because I used lacquer thinner to clean the cup-- once I put it in the leftover paint immediately curled up into small bits. I guess I should use something else, but am not sure what.

In both the metallic and pearl cases I sprayed with the same gun, the same distance from the panel and with the same PSI setting.
 

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I would guess one of the pigments were bad and out of suspension.
You cannot strain the bad pigments out if this is the case as these pigments would be a 2 to 8 mm and strainers are 125 to 200 mm.
 
Seems to me years ago that company said there was about a one year shelf life???? This would have been 20 years ago anyway.
Freezing is also a killer for these type of base.
 
Thanks Barry. I emailed back and forth with Createx and it seems you're right-- the paint I was sold was manufactured in 2008(!) and is from a formula Createx disowns now. The reseller I purchased from went out of business a few months after I bought from them, which if this was their normal operating procedures would make perfect justice, except for the guy (me) who's out $45 as a result.
 
larryq said:
Thanks Barry. I emailed back and forth with Createx and it seems you're right-- the paint I was sold was manufactured in 2008(!) and is from a formula Createx disowns now. The reseller I purchased from went out of business a few months after I bought from them, which if this was their normal operating procedures would make perfect justice, except for the guy (me) who's out $45 as a result.
Click to expand...

Hate to hear the screw job but glad you figured out the problem.
 
Had to use the term paint boogers myself recently, but it's from commercial waterbourne paint I'm spraying in my new Titan 6 stage turbine gun drying from heat sitting a few minutes between uses. Eh, learning curve stuff. But boogers are boogers, don't want customers seeing your boogers all over their schtuff.:eek:

Anyway loosing $45 is the least of the problem loosing time, other materials , the cost of aggravation , delays , & still needing base color. Haven't seen him on here in a while, but Chad @ autorod technologies was someone that could sell you a quality low cost base color such as Wanda brand.
 
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