paint cleaning thinning etc

You HAVE to get the left over paint out of the airbrush after use, and the only way to do that is to spray thinner through it. I suppose you could catch the sprayed thinner and reuse it, but I'm not going to to that. An ounce of thinner, depending on what type it is, only costs a few cents, and even when I paint a lot it takes a good while to go through a quart of it.

You can also use acrylics since they are water soluble in many cases. I just dunk my entire airbrush in a bucket of water and blow it out. Run a half a paint cup of thinner through it, then flush with water again, and blow it out with compressor air. Note that this will NOT work with enamels or laquers.

Why do you use water and thinners to clean acrylic? Isn't water alone OK?

Acrylics are water soluble in most cases, but that doesn't mean that water alone will dissolve them once they have dried. Flusing the airbrush with water alone will get about 90% of the paint out, but the 10% that has dried in places won't dissolve easily with just water. Blowing some thinner through gets rid of the stuff that the water didn't get.

Music City is right on. The thinner that was used to to thin the paint for spraying will not disolve the paint once it is dry. Latex wall paint is thinned with water, but once it is dry you can wash the wall with water and detergent and the paint stays on. Paint a table with enamel thinned with paint thinner or turpentine and once it is dry you can use the two thinners to clean the table. Once a paint is dry you need something stronger than the original thinner to disolve the dried paint. I use Acetone as an all around solvent. It has disolved every kind of dried and hardened paint I have ever used. I use it to clean my bristle brushes from whatever paint I have used. I spray it thru airbrushes that have neoprene "o" rings and evidently it`s not in contact with the "o" ring long enough to do any damage because I have been doing it for many years.

Spraying the same thinner used to thin the paint thru the airbrush is not always cleaning it as well as many people think it does.

I usually try to have two or three models ready to paint when I do paint. So when I'm switching colors for a different model, I spray thinner through the brush until it flows clear and then spray the next color. Then at the end of the session, the airbrush is completely disassembled, cleaned using soft rags and thinners and reassembled. (Nothing is more frustrating than to start spray clear coat out of what you think is a clean airbrush and to have it start shooting little pieces of dried paint of the last color you used onto the surface of the model or to find that the airbrush you thought you got clean the last session has all the internal parts frozen by what was very thin paint that had dried)
I also disassemble and clean the airbrush if I'm switching from a metallic color to another color or from a colored paint to a clear. If you watch someone who makes a living out of spray painting 1 to 1 objects, they always disassemble and clean their equipment immedietly after completing the work.

MusicCity what kind of thinner can i get that is only a few cents an ounce

I use mostly acrylics. The thinner I use is one that MikeV mentioned, and is 2 parts distilled water, 1 part Windex, 1 part Simple Green.

For enamel pick up a gallon of mineral spirits at a hardware store. For laquer use laquer thinner (which also works for enamels or acrylics). Both are about $7 a gallon at most hardware stores. In either of these cases make sure that your airbrush seals and o-rings are resistant to solvents (they should be, but check anyway).

Be aware that you really need to invest in a respirator. There are lots of posts about them here, just search for "Respirator". Breathing paint and thinner vapors is very unhealthy, although I have to admit that I did it for many years.

I think it also depends on what kind of airbrush it is. If it's all metal you could just pull the needle and wipe it down, but with say an cough aztek cough you'll need to do a bit more. Not that aztek's don't work. I used to use one, until very recently, read until today, and they work ok.