Thursday, May 12, 2016

Spray Booth

One of the small mini projects I cobbled together over the winter was a small, semi portable paint spray booth for painting structures and rolling stock, and whatever else happened to fit inside.

Again I went searching the net and found one design in particular that appeared would suit my needs and budget. My budget this time around was pretty close to zero (had to save a few dollars for groceries), so with that in mind I went scrounging. With what materials I had on hand in the recycling bin, I came up with this.

Argh, the cats have to get into everything.

Built this with extra stuff on hand...free.


It's a basic 1/2" plywood box, with approx. measurements of 29" wide, 20" in height, and 32" deep at the bottom and 23" deep at the top. An old sealed glass window pane taped to the top, and for a fan I used a 2 speed downdraft fan motor from an old stove., with suitable galvanized ducting to match. And a furnace filter mounted inside in a slide in frame. That's it, simple as she comes.

I've used it minimally thus far and it seems to function as intended. Not such a big deal with water based and acrylic paints, but the solvent based rattle can odours, kinda get to you after awhile and they hang around forever while the painted part dries. Not to mention it's not too good for your lungs or brain cells as an aside.

2 speed downdraft stove fan.

Top view showing filter (sorry bout the fluorescent lines).

Front view, there is ability to hang parts from the glass top if desired.

There were also a few disclaimers mentioned in most of the articles from the net. One being the volatility of the paint fumes possibly exploding after being drawn out of the box and thru the fan, with brush type motors giving off sparks. Also worth noting the fume volatility levels would need to be extreme for this to happen, and unlikely to in this paint booth apparatus. Just turn the fan on before starting to spray and your good to go. Not even a remote concern for me.

The other main concern was the length or run of exhaust pipe to the great outdoors. Place the fan motor as close to the spray booth as possible. I managed to get the motor fan housing right at the back of the box. I seem to recall there was a figure thrown about, like maximum 15 feet of exhaust pipe from the spray booth and as few turns (elbows) as practical. The amount of galvanized duct work you see in the photo is my full run. It goes out of the building right where you see the pipe supported by the plywood.

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