Paint booth preference, downdraft vs. others

I am needing to build a paint booth in my garage as I am in an upscale apartment community and painting outside is not an option and in the last three months of painting in my garage has left a layer of "paint dust" on everything.

My thoughts are building a 4' x 4' pvc frame covered in thicker mil plastic with a box fan attached at one end. My question is should I set this up with a screen of some sort that the piece sits on with the airflow directed down, or should I just set up the piece spaced from the wall the fan is installed into and just spray in that direction? Curious if anyone has done a similar setup and how successful they have been at it. Also if you have a better suggestion for a setup I would love to hear about that as well.

Currently painting mainly smaller size kits and MPR kits, and the occasional fiberglass kit.

Paul Rudin

NAR 96663

i'm in the same boat as you. i'm tired of getting little dust flakes in my finishes. all of the commercial hobby spray booths aren't really long and thin like you need for a rocket. i know if you want to DIY, the important thing is to get a sparkless motor, since you're going to be pumping flammable gas through it.

Been using the same two Spray booths in my Finished Basement for over 30 years. Much like your 4'x 4' idea mine is a 3' x 3'x 7' folding-X tubular frame with heavy 12mil visqueen clear plastic sheeting with added flaps and velcor closer and leather type snaps down the front. Using a squirrel cage blower with 20 feet of 4" dryer hose.
While neither it or my much smaller Steel cabinet booth contain ALL the overspray from Rattle-Can, Air brush or Spray guns. They sure eliminate the vast majority of it. Best is the blower vent the smalls outdoors which makes the better 2/3rd very happy.

Plans and such are covered in Tech-Tip 011 at www.narhams.org in the library section under tech-tips and was published in Sport Rocketry awhile back.

RocketGeekInFL said:

I am needing to build a paint booth in my garage as I am in an upscale apartment community and painting outside is not an option and in the last three months of painting in my garage has left a layer of "paint dust" on everything.

My thoughts are building a 4' x 4' pvc frame covered in thicker mil plastic with a box fan attached at one end. My question is should I set this up with a screen of some sort that the piece sits on with the airflow directed down, or should I just set up the piece spaced from the wall the fan is installed into and just spray in that direction? Curious if anyone has done a similar setup and how successful they have been at it. Also if you have a better suggestion for a setup I would love to hear about that as well.

Currently painting mainly smaller size kits and MPR kits, and the occasional fiberglass kit.

Paul Rudin

NAR 96663

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Paul

The good thing about your approach is that it's scaleable to meet project demands. My neighbor just painted a Cessna 172 in a PVC paintroom with very good results.

With regard to air flow, downdraft is ideal, and if you can draw the air through on the exhaust side, then you dont pressurize the paint room.

When it's too cold to use my paint room, A friend lets me paint here:

Mine is just a cardboard box about 2'x3' with a hole in the back sized for a cheap furnace filter. Box fan snug against the filter. CHAD but does the job.
The next one will be 3'x4' PVC and plastic sheeting. Downdraft with an exhaust hose. Rotating base with mounting spindle. I do mostly LPR.

Mike

You have a very nice friend!! Nice for cold weather days. Not much of a problem here in Florida, but would love such a thing for some of my bigger rockets.

RocketGeekInFL said:

You have a very nice friend!! Nice for cold weather days. Not much of a problem here in Florida, but would love such a thing for some of my bigger rockets.

Click to expand...

You paint room will work every bit as well as that $60K version.

There are a few things to keep in mind when building your downdraft:
All you want is enough air movement to keep the air clear. That is, you want the overspray to clear the paint room quickly and leave you with a constant flow of clean air. This may sound obvious, but too much airflow can be bad too. All you want is clean air.

When it comes to filters, size matters. Obviously, a larger filter allows for more airflow, but it also allows you to filter the air for smaller particulates. So you want big filters, perhaps a furnace filter, with one or two pre-filters.

Don’t pressurize your paint room. Place your motors on the exhaust side of the paint room. Check any good downdraft paint room, and the doors will be sucked closed when the fans are running.

This will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about paint rooms.:
https://www.futurecure.com/id103.html

Keep us up to date on your project.