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Badger Crescendo Fine Needle Performance

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  • Member since
    November 2005
Badger Crescendo Fine Needle Performance
Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, January 14, 2007 10:04 AM

I am essentially a rank beginner at airbrushing but I am making headway.  I have found that the fine tip and needle on the Badger Crescendo kit I'm using requires a fairly high air pressure (above 20 psi) to get the paint to flow. 

I have tried Testors and Tamiya, and thinned them both quite a bit, but in each case I get essentially no flow until I crank up the air.  Of course the fine point is what I want to use for fairly low paint volumes, and cranking up the air seems to be going in the wrong direction.  Yet it's the only way I am able to work the problem with this setup. 

Comments?

  • Member since
    November 2005
Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, January 14, 2007 12:05 PM

Just remember that you may have to thin your paint a little more than usual when using a fine needle and nozzle.

 

E

  • Member since
    November 2005
Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, January 14, 2007 12:08 PM

Sorry, didn't see that you had already thinned them down a bit.  In addition to this, make sure that all of your paint and air passages are spotless.  Furthermore, you may want to use a metal color cup. This may help you to drop the air pressure a bit.

 

  • Member since
    April 2003
  • From: Hayward, CA
Posted by MikeV on Sunday, January 14, 2007 1:51 PM

One, it is a siphon-feed airbrush and needs pressures around 20 to pick up paint consistantly, if you want lower pressures then you need a gravity-feed airbrush like the 100LG, Omni 4000, etc.

Two, the fine needle was designed to be used for a paint medium that has very fine pigments and most modeling paints do not fall into that category.

You can thin enamels to water consistancy and still not get the results you want as the pigments are too large for a fine nozzle/needle combo.

Remember that nozzle sizes and needle sizes are designed for a certain medium and modeling paints work best with a medium tip, although you can get away with the fine tip somewhat it is much trickier. 

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom. " Charles Spurgeon
  • Member since
    November 2005
Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, January 14, 2007 6:14 PM
 MikeV wrote:

One, it is a siphon-feed airbrush and needs pressures around 20 to pick up paint consistantly, if you want lower pressures then you need a gravity-feed airbrush like the 100LG, Omni 4000, etc.

Good point.  I am using the bottom mounted cup in many cases instead of a siphon-fed jar, but it's still a siphon feed of course.  I have had good results with the medium tip and a sipyhon-fed jar with pressures as low as 5 psi (give or take).

 MikeV wrote:

Two, the fine needle was designed to be used for a paint medium that has very fine pigments and most modeling paints do not fall into that category.

You can thin enamels to water consistancy and still not get the results you want as the pigments are too large for a fine nozzle/needle combo.

Remember that nozzle sizes and needle sizes are designed for a certain medium and modeling paints work best with a medium tip, although you can get away with the fine tip somewhat it is much trickier. 

 

Thanks for the tips.  I know that the brush works well with the fine tip using thinner only, so there does not appear to be a mechanical issue with the equipment.

I am beginning to see that I am not necessarily the culprit, and also that it will take a bit of "fiddlin'" to get things on track.

  • Member since
    August 2005
  • From: Greencastle, IN
Posted by eizzle on Sunday, January 14, 2007 8:06 PM
Try using the fine needle with the medium nozzle. You will get a really fine line, and paint still passes through ok. It has something to do with the pitch on the needle. Good luck!

Colin

 Homer Simpson for president!!!

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