In life, tools come in two varieties – good tools, and cheap tools. This is where the hacker steps in, to transform a cheap tool into more than the sum of its parts. [Josh] had problems with his Eastwood powdercoating gun. [Josh] decided to fix things with a couple of tasteful mods.
The problem with the gun was related to the delivery of powder to the workpiece. The stream was either too weak to coat properly, or too heavy, delivering a thick stream of powder. [Josh] surmised that with better airflow into the powder reservoir, the gun would deliver a properly mixed cloud of powder as required. By drilling a couple of small holes into the air feed into the reservoir, the powder stream was much less heavy and the gun’s performance was greatly improved.
[Josh] then decided to take things a step further, by fitting a tip from a more expensive gun to his Eastwood model. There were some challenges in getting it connected electrically, but nothing a little electrical tape couldn’t fix. While this did further improve results, it was a minor improvement compared to the air feed modifications.
Overall, [Josh] was able to take a poorly performing tool and transform it into something much more useful, just by drilling a couple of holes. Check out our Hacklet on quick tool hacks, or share your best work in the comments.
Firstly, he is missing the original diverter tip. There’s no way to compare when he does not use the original tip. And the tip position can and should be adjusted accordingly.
I do have the same dual-voltage gun. I’ve used it only once, but plan on using it more when i get to that point. It’s been a long time since i used it, so i can’t really comment on how it really works, other than the tip thing.
The air pressure is really low, so the holes might make it a bit better when you have a full amount of powder, but it might not matter when you have the tip on, so who knows.
The only thing the diverter tip does is widen the powder stream. And when I say widen, I mean it shoots the powder out the sides. Pretty much unusable. I went to eastwood’s powder coating class and they said to leave it off. The tip does nothing to dilute the powder stream or prevent the hopper/powder reservoir from compacting.
Does not the new head have a type of diverter as well? Looks to me like it does, although i’m not 100% it works like the original. I tried going back and forth the video, but i don’t quite know if it just blows the bowder from the center of the diverter and air around it or does it work just like the original with bowder coming around the diverter.
Anyway, that might be a ok mod to add a pipe a over the head and have air blow around the powder stream to help focus the stream a bit more towards the object. Or just make the diverter smaller or something. I mean if the idea of the diverter is to make the stream smoother and not just shoot out compressed stream of powder.
Man, how does not Eastwood make some tests to better their own product?
Yea, I have no idea why eastwood dropped the ball so hard with this. My gut says that the guy in charge of powder coating is just an idiot. :) Even their powders stink.
More on point, the tip’s main job is not to mix the air. I think your thinking of a paint gun. Sure, it does a little, but wIth powder coating, it’s the hopper’s job to mix the powder and air. You can get fluidization chambers that, supposedly, better mix the powder and air. I haven’t had much luck with the one I have. But, that is what they are for.
Yes, you are correct. The new tip contains a diverter. But it is much smaller and has a much steeper angle. As far as I can tell, the diverter only has one job. It diverts the powder around the electrode. This diverter (the new one) creates a teardrop shape in front of the electrode. I believe this shape is important to the efficiency of the electrode. What I imagine is that the electrode ionizes the air in front of the electrode. The diverter makes this area mostly dead air. This allows the ionization to build up like a capacitor. As the powder flies by the ionized air, the powder becomes charged. I imagine that the increased surface area of the teardrop allows the powder to pickup a higher charge. It also keeps the electrode clean.
Eastwood’s diverter does none of that. Not to plug my own stuff, but I did do a review of eastwood’s powder coating gun. I talked about the tip and you can see the difference it makes. https://youtu.be/jWGJL0oa098?t=2m21s
Alrighty. Perhaps, when i get back to using the powder gun, i’ll try testing some mods for the diverter.
From the description it looks like he tried it with thr original tip first and then switched to the expensive tip later.