Paint Booth

[BrianP]

Planning to buy an inflatable paint booth for priming and potentially painting the plane ourselves once finished. Anybody have experience with these and have suggestions for size/brand.

 

[Tassie]

Planning to buy an inflatable paint booth for priming and potentially painting the plane ourselves once finished. Anybody have experience with these and have suggestions for size/brand.

For priming parts, you can get away with a fairly small booth, size it long enough to do the longest skins (wing skins I guess). If you're going to prime everything, you need to make up a large table with mesh on it, I used galvanized wire mesh with about 1/2" squares, to hold a zillion small parts at a time and shoot primer so over-spray goes straight through the table. I made up a booth with a timber frame and clear plastic, with the table built in, and fitted it with wheels so I could roll it out of the way when not using it.

On the other hand, if you're planning on painting a completed RV-10 with an inflatable booth, then read on and you might decide against it:

I used a relatively cheap Ch*nese inflatable booth from a company called Vevor. See the following link, and some prior posts on the same site:

https://tasrv10.com/?p=4511

This thing was quite robust, but the inflation fan is very noisy (I wore noise cancelling headphones all the time it was on). The biggest problem with these things is air flow. The black filters they supply are quite ordinary, the exit filters clog up fairly quickly and the fan that is supposed to pressurize the booth and lead to airflow through the booth, is next to useless. I wound up buying some proper spray booth exit filter material, and replacing their two "exit" filters. I also fitted a large blower on the inlet side of the booth, and wrapping proper inlet filter material on the inlet side of this fan. Only then was there enough airflow to be able to shoot a large spray job like the RV-10 fuselage. Without these additions, the booth would fog up quickly, and you can't see what you are doing making it very difficult to maintain a wet edge.

If you're planning on painting an RV-10 fuselage in one of these, you need room around the fuse for a lot of lighting, and depending on how you do it you will probably need extra room for the cowls and doors. You've got to be able to work around the thing for masking, you need trestles to stand on and spray the high parts, and a dolly that you don't like to roll around on and paint the bottom of the fuse (as well as yourself, and the dolly). I bought the largest size inflatable booth available, which as I recall was 33x20x13 feet. Even then it was a bit of a squeeze for the complete fuselage with the doors and bottom cowl on for mask application and back off again for painting the colors. It was OK for the wings, which I did one at a time but it would be possible to set them both up to spray as one job.

Given what I had to do to fix up the airflow problems, if I was doing it again I think I'd build a booth out of timber and plastic. I have heard of people building a wooden frame inside one of these inflatable booths so it could be 'deflated' between jobs without removing everything from inside it. Hanging lights up high is also a problem, but you need high lights to be able to see the glare and keep a wet edge across the top of the cabin. At least a wooden frame would make mounting lights high easier, but if you're going to do that ... may as well forget the inflatable thing and cover the wooden frame in plastic!

Also, I put a tarp down on the floor, and taped drop cloths over it, to keep things clean-ish during a job. I wet down the floor with a garden sprayer between colors. Overspray falls on the floor, dries, then kicks up as dust when you walk over it, and the poor airflow through the booth makes overspray a lot worse than it should be. The worst for this was the (polyurethane) primer. After each major operation, I folded up and discarded the drop cloths, and taped down new ones for the next job.

Are you sure you wouldn't rather pay for a professional paint job???

Adrian

 

[BrianP]

For priming parts, you can get away with a fairly small booth, size it long enough to do the longest skins (wing skins I guess). If you're going to prime everything, you need to make up a large table with mesh on it, I used galvanized wire mesh with about 1/2" squares, to hold a zillion small parts at a time and shoot primer so over-spray goes straight through the table. I made up a booth with a timber frame and clear plastic, with the table built in, and fitted it with wheels so I could roll it out of the way when not using it.

On the other hand, if you're planning on painting a completed RV-10 with an inflatable booth, then read on and you might decide against it:

I used a relatively cheap Ch*nese inflatable booth from a company called Vevor. See the following link, and some prior posts on the same site:

https://tasrv10.com/?p=4511

This thing was quite robust, but the inflation fan is very noisy (I wore noise cancelling headphones all the time it was on). The biggest problem with these things is air flow. The black filters they supply are quite ordinary, the exit filters clog up fairly quickly and the fan that is supposed to pressurize the booth and lead to airflow through the booth, is next to useless. I wound up buying some proper spray booth exit filter material, and replacing their two "exit" filters. I also fitted a large blower on the inlet side of the booth, and wrapping proper inlet filter material on the inlet side of this fan. Only then was there enough airflow to be able to shoot a large spray job like the RV-10 fuselage. Without these additions, the booth would fog up quickly, and you can't see what you are doing making it very difficult to maintain a wet

Thanks Tassie. That’s very helpful. I definitely don’t have enough space for something that size. We’re building in a 44x38 hangar that also has our RV8 inside of it. I think we could probably get a 20x15 booth in there but definitely not something that size. I was hoping for something easy and quick to set up and take down when needed. I hadn’t thought much about all the rigging around the plane and the airflow issues. I’ve never painted a plane before. My dad has painted a few muscle cars and I thought we might give it a go but that might be biting off a little more than we can chew. We were also considering wrapping the plane instead of painting but haven’t done much research into what that would mean for weight, corrosion etc. Thanks again!

 

[Tassie]

I see from another post you are at the beginning of your build. In that case I wouldn't bother thinking about painting the completed aircraft for now. If your plan is to prime all parts, then I'd suggest that an inflatable booth is a bad idea, you'll get sick of blowing it up and letting it down. Here's a picture of the inside of my "priming parts" booth, made out of wood and plastic, on wheels so it can be rolled out of the way when not in use. It wasn't very wide, just high enough to stand in, but long enough to do the long parts. The mesh table was really useful. A mini-gun is essential for all the small parts so they don't blow all over the place while you're trying to spray them. Priming internal parts, should you elect to do that, is a forgiving operation, I think I only replaced the plastic cover around the booth once during the entire all-slow-build project.

This was late in its life. It had a small extraction fan with a foil tube I just ran outside when I was using it.

 

[bobrv7taildragger]

I made a plastic booth...orange plastic electrical tubing covered in 3 mil plastic. 7 box filters to let air in. one box filter out. I needed this or the both tried to vacuum pack me...lol. I have a huge 500mm fan running 1100 rpm and it sucks air through the one box filter causing a nice downdraft over the "table". soft enough to not pull paint away but hard enough to move the overspray away from me and the work. use a descent compressor and of course spend money on PPE. good money. make sure fresh air comes in and overspray is sucked out to be evacuated outside of your building. this is nasty stuff we spray. I made things to hold the ribs so i could paint the whole way around it in one go...probably not necessary....could use the old mesh trick and paint one side then dry and paint the other.

 

[Jonnyb]

I have these in the large and small sizes:

Spray tents

Along with filters and a box fan.
The large one is 9ft long!

 

[scottmillhouse]

I had good luck with an inflatable booth. Not perfect as others said but very convenient to put up and down as needed to paint a component. Found out to only use when the sun is low in morning or evening because of glare and heat through the clear roof. Paint done with vinyl side stripes being added soon.

 

[9GT]

I built my own paint booth in my hanger. Its used right now for climate controlled working during the build. Its got a small propane furnace and a small AC unit. I'll just put in the air filters and exhaust fan when its time to paint. I am pretty frugal and it ran about $300 to built. 12' W X 24' L X 8' H.

 

[nzrv8]

I made a plastic booth...orange plastic electrical tubing covered in 3 mil plastic. 7 box filters to let air in. one box filter out. I needed this or the both tried to vacuum pack me...lol. I have a huge 500mm fan running 1100 rpm and it sucks air through the one box filter causing a nice downdraft over the "table". soft enough to not pull paint away but hard enough to move the overspray away from me and the work. use a descent compressor and of course spend money on PPE. good money. make sure fresh air comes in and overspray is sucked out to be evacuated outside of your building. this is nasty stuff we spray. I made things to hold the ribs so i could paint the whole way around it in one go...probably not necessary....could use the old mesh trick and paint one side then dry and paint the other.

G'day Bob, Have you actually started building your -7 yet or are you still just playing around?

 

[CaptPausert]

I am using one of the vevor booths for priming. Just be a bit careful as it requires continuous power to the blower to stay inflated. I had a short power outage and almost had it collapse on my wet paint parts. Luckily the power came back on fairly quickly

 

[skelrad]

PVC makes for a pretty easy to build structure as well. I got this booth from a local builder. The nice thing is it breaks down easily for storage when it's not needed. Just drape plastic over it and install fans/filters.

 

[isosceles]

 

[Carl Froehlich]

My neighbor has a party tent left over from a wedding that he gave me. A few new pieces of blue plastic, an old attic fan for exhaust, shipping crate plywood on the floor, a bunch of lights and good to go. I made an air intake filter from scrap lumber and such. The cold water bucket was the final barrier to water in the airline. I drained a lot of water out of it.

I did three planes, but I’m done. The current build will get final paint using my checkbook…

Carl