How do you clean your Airbrush?

Hi Chris, 

I've noticed the same thing with my Paasche H.  My normal cleaning regimen with it is to spray a color cup or two worth through it, intermittently back flushing it.  I only occasionally do a full a full breakdown.  If there is any stubborn residue, usually Acryl Flat Black, I use lacquer thinner to clean it off.  I don't worry about too much.  I've never had any residue actually affect the air brush performance.

I follow the the same sort of regimen with my Badger 200 NH (single action 155), but since I use only enamels in it, it's rare that the occasional breakdown cleaning reveals any residue.

Andy

 

 

During and after each session, I spray lacquer thinner thru the AB. A couple times a month, I'll break 'er down and clean the parts with lacquer thinner as well.

Andy 

Wulf wrote:

During and after each session, I spray lacquer thinner thru the AB. A couple times a month, I'll break 'er down and clean the parts with lacquer thinner as well.

Ditto ... same method here. 

Thanks for your input guys.  The resedue doesn't seem to affect my AB's performance, I just hate having an expensive tool look bad.  I'll try some laquer thinner, and see if that works. 

Thanks fellas

Chris

Depends on what paint I sprayed. If it was an enamel or lacquer, then straight lacquer thinner does the trick for me. If it was an acrylic, I'll blast some windex through it first, then follow with a shot of lacquer thinner.

Well i have a Aztek double and love how you can unscrew the tip and clean, but i clean the badboy everytime i lay a colour down with metho (not sure what you call it over at the states) and once a month i gice the airbrush and tips a bath in gun wash (which eats anything in its path) and the airbrush keeps on going on like it is brand new out of the box

big_unit193 wrote:

...and once a month i gice the airbrush and tips a bath in gun wash (which eats anything in its path) and the airbrush keeps on going on like it is brand new out of the box

How long have you had your Aztek?  Perhaps I am misunderstanding your process, but when I had an Aztek the cleaning instructions were explicit that the airbrush body was NEVER supposed to be soaked in cleaner.  You might want to make sure that your cleaning regimen is kosher with respect to the Aztek instructions.  I can only imagine that warranty replacement if needed would be worse in Australia than in America.

On the the other hand, I did follow all the Aztek instructions religious and it still died.  Who knows maybe if I soaked the silly thing once month in spite of Testor's instructions, maybe it would of kept going.