Thread: siphon feed vs. gravity feed

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ok both my sprayers are devilbiss siphon feeds and my teacher at school made some comment about he only uses gravity feed.
are they really that much better or something?

I'm not a pro painter, but I have used siphon for years, but when we painted the parts on my Kids '29 I broke out the new gravity feed they had bought me a few years ago. I was saving it for a special project. After using it, I will never go back to the old ones, and the main reason is ease of use. You load the top container and do your painting, and when cleanup time comes it was so much easier.

All I had to do was unscrew the plastic cup and clean it out with some laquer thinner, then wipe the rest of the gun with a rag wet with more laquer thinner. Finally, I loaded the cup with clean laquer thinner and ran that through the gun, and I was done. I used to dread cleaning my old guns, but this thing was the best. It is also a Hi Volume, low pressure, and the paint went really far.

Maybe some of the guys who know more will have a different opinion, but for me these are the cat's meow.

Don

PS: I also bought a touchup gun made the same way, and it is perfect for small parts, like brake drums, engines, transmissions, etc. The pattern is very easy to control and get good results.

I don't know as much about the larger paint guns, but in the airbrush world the gravity feeds do not require as much air pressure and therefore their spray pattern is more precise and leaves much less paint in the air and more on what you are painting.

The siphon feed require more air pressure since the paint is fed to the nossel from a vaccum created by the flow of air. It takes more air pressure and makes for a higher rate of overspray.

I would assume that would also apply to the the larger paint guns as well...

Dave Brisco

Gravity feed, HVLP is the only way to go. However, you need enough air volume from your compressor to feed the gun.

I use plastic liners inside my HVLP gravity feed gun, and the cleanup is almost nil. I run clear thinner through, then burp the gun and run some more thinnger. After I wipe things dowm, I'm done.

What brand/model HVLP guns do yall use?