Hello everyone. I am getting into modeling, and decided to buy an airbrush. After two days of searching these forums, and everywhere else on the internet, I think I have narrowed my choices down to two Iwata air brushes. I am deciding between the HP-CR (Eclipse) and the HP-CS (Eclipse).
I called customer service at Iwata and asked them about the two brushes. They told me the only real difference between the two models was that the "NEW" HP-CR has tefelon internals, why the HP-CS is solvent protected. The other main difference is that the HP-CS has a cut away handle designed for quickly cleaning the needle between paint changes. Other than that, they said the two needles will spray very similar to one another.
When I asked them about the different needle sizes (the HP-CR comes with a .5 mm, and the HP-CS comes with a .35mm), they confirmed what I already expected. The needles size should be selected by what types of paint you are wanting to use, not how fine a line you want to spray. If you are using thicker paint, pick the .5mm needle for example. If you want a finer line, then thin the paint down more, and spray with the same .5mm needle.
After this, he told me that both of these needle sizes (.5mm and .35mm) are very capable of spraying what I will be using the most, Master Model Enamles. He then said that you may be able to squeeze a slighlty thinner line with the HP-CS's .35mm needle, but it wouldn't be very noticeable on model painting.
With that said, I want to know if it is possible to purchase a .35mm HP-CS needle and put it into an HP-CR airbrush and get the same result I would get with the HP-CS? I also want to know if I would also have to replace the .5 nozzle with a .35 nozzle when I made this change-over? I know based on what this guy told me that this is probably not necessary, but it would be sure nice to know so I could go ahead and choose the HP-CR brush. I do trust what this guy was telling me by the way, simply because he was telling me that I would probably be fine with the $40 cheaper airbrush.
Any other comments are definitely welcome.