There was an earlier post in this forum in which mention was made of a cheap airbrush from Super Cheap Auto (for all you non-Aussies out there, it's an auto accessories/parts chain.)
Just to refresh your memories, it's a pretty close copy of a Badger 150 selling for a price of $30Au (that's a little under $23US). I decided to track one down to see just what you get.
Well... for this price, you get the airbrush itself, two jars (one with the feed tube assembly), colour cup, vinyl air hose, a nipple to connect to your compressor outlet and a hanger hook to screw onto a convenient spot on/near your workbench.
A note about the included colour cup - those of you familiar with the colour cup supplied with genuine Badger airbrushes will know that the siphon tube passes through the sidewall of the cup and extends to the base. On the one supplied with this airbrush, the siphon tube ends at the hole in the sidewall, the top of this hole just below half the height of the cup, so there is no way it will draw paint after it reaches this level, leaving perhaps the lower 30% of the cup unusable.
So far, so good, now for the bad (?) news.
I don't know if it was specific to my particular unit, but it was NOT very well assembled. On taking the airbrush itself out of the box and removing the protective cap,
the tip fell off - it had only just barely been screwed on. I then unscrewed the handle to examine the needle actuating mechanism. Drawing back on the trigger revealed very minimal movement, with the needle itself not retracting when the trigger was drawn back. This entire assembly hadn't been screwed into the barrel of the airbrush sufficiently, nor had the locking screw on the needle been tightened. After making the required adjustments, it appeared that everything worked as it should - I had sufficient range of movement and the needle moved in concert with the mechanism.
Time for a short test run.
First up I screwed on my braided air hose. Not the greatest fit - the hose was still free to swivel even though the connector was already screwed on as far as it wouid go. Naturally, on switching on the compressor, there was some leakage. Plan B - I used the vinyl hose. This gave me a better seal. Time for some paint.
First test: Tamiya flat acrylic, unthinned. As expected, it had a hard time pulling it through.
Second Test: Same paint as above, thinned approximately 2 parts paint, 1 part methylated spirits (known in other parts as
denatured alcohol) As expected, much improved paint flow. I didn't have a lot of time to play around a lot with pressures or thinning ratios, but it felt good and delivered paint to the surface smoothly, with a very fine spray pattern - coverage of large areas is excellent - fine lines, not bad (I need practice because I have never used a double-action brush before - lol) On medium-large areas at a distance of approximately 5-6cm, the demarcation at the edge is quite good - one could do reasonable freehand camouflage with it. (again this would depend on pressure and thinning ratios).
Conclusions:
I would expect that anyone who is unfamiliar with airbrushes and how to adjust and maintain them would not have been able to get this thing to work straight out of the box. Certainly not ideal for a "first timer" given that there are no instructions or a parts diagram included.
However, for $30Au it's a VERY cheap double-action brush and once it's set up properly can deliver fairly good results. It's a viable option for someone who is familiar with airbrushing and perhaps has a single action brush and wants a bit more versatility but doesn't want to spend lots of $$$ on a new name-brand brush.
Another option found on the shelves at Super Cheap is perhaps more suited to first time airbrush users - I didn't pick up one of these, but it's a close copy of the Badger 350 series at $20Au. Simple to use, with a single adjustment for paint flow.