A new tool and some ramblings about compressors. 😃

I bought a cheap hardware store airbrush back in 2015 and treated it like an animal. Actually, my dog treats her toys better than I did this airbrush. I ran it off a garage compressor without a moisture trap, ran it with improperly thinned paint, no flow improver, no airbrush cleaner, I used hard water, and I didn’t break it down to thoroughly clean it more than maybe… twice?

Horrible, terrible, and honestly wasteful.

When I lost access to that compressor I put the airbrush in a box and forgot about it for half a decade.

I’ve considered buying a new compressor for a few years now, but I really didn’t want to get stuck with some loud garbage that I’d eventually want to replace, so I put it off and focused on other interests.

That changes today!

I bought a decent compressor! Some would say overpriced, and I might be inclined to agree with them! But I have one now!

I’ve been told that having a decent compressor is more important than having a better airbrush, it is after all the source that feeds the latter, so I wanted to get something robust that would last me a decade. 😄

I made sure to get one with a built in air tank since I’m quite sensitive to noise and having this thing running all the time would be a dealbreaker.

Generally the way this works is that a compressor will detect a pressure drop (ie. you spraying) and top up the air supply. A compressor without a tank will do so the moment you touch the trigger while the one with a tank will not. The tank acts as a buffer that automatically refills once the pressure drops below an arbitrary threshold. If set up properly (regulator pressure set to within the compressor’s rated airflow usually measured in litres per minute) it will do so without ever dropping below the working pressure of the airbrush.

That being said, if you don’t mind the noise, there are premium tankless compressors and valid reasons to go with them over a cheaper one. The main issue would be something called pulsing. This is where you get intermittent airflow because the machine can’t keep up, the air is being coughed out because the machine doesn’t have the ability to build up a steady pressure at the rate you are pulling. This is one of the big selling points of an air tank, which is even something you can buy as an add-on to a tankless machine. Another is the machine’s duty cycle, a term I recognise from when I got started welding. Compressors have moving parts and these unavoidably generate some amount of heat, a machine can only keep on running for so long on insufficient cooling and will eventually have to turn off to cool down. The duty cycle is quite simply the ratio at which you use the machine and the machine resting. A 60/40 rating would in this case mean 60 seconds of active use followed by a mandatory 40 second break before another 60 seconds of work. 😃

I ended up settling on the TC-610H + from Taiwanese brand Sparmax. I did a lot of reading on hobby forums where it was favourably compared to the AS186 from Panzag, a very similar compressor at a lower price that is seemingly produced by a bunch of different manufacturers and sold under the same ”AS186” name all over the web. I’m sure Panzag is a great brand, but the only AS186 available locally was a generic model so I didn’t want to take the chance. 🤷

At this point I was as usual pretty well into the rabbit hole and decided to spring for a new airbrush.

I didn’t want to rely on my old one once I discovered it had rust spots on the inside and this time around I really wanted something that was easier to thoroughly clean. I caved and bought a 2024 Evolution from Harder & Steenbeck. 😁

It’s their intermediate model that still has a lot of the quality of life features of their more premium offering, it’s a beautiful tool.

My biggest problem with the old brush was the siphon style feed, it gets pretty awkward when I want to use a small amount of paint and have to tilt the brush excessively to get paint to cover the siphon while I’m trying to put paint down. This problem is completely eliminated on the new gravity fed brush.

I am however keeping the other brush around to see if I can give it a full refresh, I’m sure it will come in handy for spraying primer or for when I have to base coat a big model. 🙂