Airbrush spray booth

[Guest]

208cfm or cubic foot per minute is about 353m3 per hour

[Guest]

That’s not a measured airflow (mass flow) though Colin, it’s just a total volume measurement. Mass flow is measured in mass/time units, usually Kg/s.

Whats most important in this context is air velocity at the user face. This is measured in length/time units, like feet per second. To be most effective air velocity needs to be as even as possible across the entire face of the booth. This means no areas of the booth are not doing their job.

It is no good having a booth fan that can move huge amounts of air if it is only moving it from one spot. The rest of the booth will then have dead air areas and not collect contaminants. Unfortunately you can’t tell this without seeing one in operation and actually measuring it. I would say a higher quality unit is more likely to achieve this though.

If the fan isn’t capable of moving the air in the first place, that’s all kind of moot. 200cfm is barely a bathroom exhaust fan, which would be fine if all you had to worry about was steam.

[Jim R]

This thread, which I started, appears to be going round in circles. Some feel that the booth I have bought is not up to the job and expensive. That's their opinion. Reviews on the web and the experience of others disagree. Let's leave it there and beg to differ. When all's said and done it's my money and my choice.

[Tim Marlow]

There is far more to a spray booth design than the ability of a fan to move air though Colin. The front end, filter and booth, will always restrict air flow so the fan will not approach its design maximum output. A better designed, so almost certainly more expensive booth, will make better use of the available air draw than a cheaper one, even if the cheaper one has a “stronger” fan.

In this context, by the way, 200cfm is moving far more air than even the biggest airbrush will put out…..

You can see from this graph (sourced from Paach) that even a very large 0.6 nozzle, run at a very high 40psi, only outputs about a tenth of that booths capacity. Most modelling applications will only be outputting about 10cfm.
Personally if I could afford one, and I did much more spraying, I would upgrade to Jim’s booth in a heartbeat. I would ignore the manufacturer’s filter change times though. I’d buy a cheap anemometer to check operating face air velocity, changing filters based on that measurement.
Quality always costs, and in this case the numbers more than add up.

[Tim Marlow]

This thread, which I started, appears to be going round in circles. Some feel that the booth I have bought is not up to the job and expensive. That's their opinion. Reviews on the web and the experience of others disagree. Let's leave it there and beg to differ. When all's said and done it's my money and my choice.

Sorry Jim, didn’t see this until after I posted….I’ll stop now

[Jim R]

No worries Tim :thumb2:

[Ian M]

Well by my best guess my room is about 26.3 m3 so it looks like i will be able to fart as much as I like and not kill myself.

In the interest of love peace and harmony, shall we say this thread is all talked out. Would you like me to close it Jim.

[Jim R]

Yes please Ian. We will end with your humourous post. Thanks.