Tech Tip: Cleaning Your Airbrush
By Michael Benolkin
We all have our favorite airbrushes, and if you're like me, you clean your airbrush regularly. Despite our best efforts though, eventually the airbrush seems to have problems with reliable flow or a 'sticky' double-action trigger. The problem usually entails a bit of paint that we missed, bent needle tip, or other minor glitch. I've been using Iwata airbrushes for many years now and I really like their design as they are easy to dismantle and clean.
When I'm doing a marathon airbrushing session, which means I'm applying multiple colors in a single sitting, I will shoot an appropriate thinner through the airbrush before changing colors. These days, I use acrylics and the one common enemy of acrylics (excluding Testors Acryl) is Windex (window cleaner) with ammonia. Acrylics will dissolve with Windex and it is very inexpensive to use as a cleaner. Full disclosure: the airbrush manufacturers do not recommend Windex as the ammonia will also remove the chrome plating from the airbrush over time. My oldest Iwata finally has bare brass showing at the bottom of its paint cup after a decade of Windex exposure. Other airbrush brands may be more sensitive. In any case, I have not noted any change in performance of my airbrush with bare brass exposed to the paint.
Shooting enamels and lacquers are no different, I shoot lacquer thinner through the airbrush between colors (cans of lacquer thinner are inexpensive at your local hardware store) and I use the Iwata cleaning station (a vessel that contains soapy water) to capture the lacquer thinner vapors during these cleaning shots. Lacquer thinner works well with not only lacquers, but also enamels and acrylics. For those times when even lacquer thinner doesn't work well enough, I use MEK (also available at your hardware store), but like certain liquid cements, MEK evaporates rather quickly and the fumes can be harmful. Shooting MEK into the Iwata cleaning station works fine in my shop.
In any case, sometimes I'll pick up the airbrush a day or two after my last session and the trigger movement is impaired or just outright stuck. The latter happens especially after using Tamiya acrylics as they dry hard on the model (a good thing), and one little bit of paint left somewhere in the airbrush can gum things up. At times like these, it is time to break down the airbrush and do some cleaning. I have Iwata's cleaning mat and tool kit, which makes the task of breaking down, cleaning, and reassembling my airbrush just as fast as servicing my favorite pistol.
Here's a video demonstration of this airbrush cleaning system:
Before obtaining these tools, I thought I'd been getting my airbrushes clean up until now, and while they still worked fine, they just weren't 100%. Having these extra tools opened new possibilities and now I am certain my Iwatas will last much longer around here. What tools am I using:
The needle repair system is an interesting tool that will fix your needle tips like a pencil sharpener and, unless you're especially hard on your airbrush needles, will extend the life of your needle and airbrush.
One point on the ultrasonic cleaner. When I wrote that tip, I'd owned that unit a little over three years and now it is over seven years old and still going strong. Who knew that an inexpensive eBay tool would endure? No complaints from me...
Now go build something!