Small, portable, but powerful paint sprayers have revolutionized interior and exterior home painting projects, allowing handymen to give everything from houses to garages, barns, fences, sheds, and other outbuildings a thorough coat of paint in a matter of an hour or two, rather than days. These tools are straightforward enough for even fairly inexperienced people to get excellent results with them, and airless paint sprayers represent some of the strongest available today.
The airless paint sprayer is an advance in most ways over paint guns using compressed air to vaporize and shoot materials. Practical limits on air pressure limit the materials that a compressed air gun can apply to thin and some medium-textured types, while thick paint will clog the gun or emerge in clumps and spatters. Overspray is ample and these sprayers are usually best for small jobs in a paint booth.
Airless paint sprayers come in several different configurations, but even the smallest and most self-contained pack quite a punch as far as pressure is concerned. Diaphragm pump systems are intermediate between compressor and piston pump sprayers, but even their pressure is higher than that of air compressor equivalents. Airless systems with pistons offer at least 2,500 PSI and often as much as 3,000 PSI, which is one of their main advantages.
Having high PSI supplied by a mechanical piston shunting paint through the spray gun creates powerful suction, enabling the use of long hoses connecting the paint gun to a large material supply such as a 5 gallon can of paint. Even a small painter that squeezes the piston, filters, and other mechanical parts into the handheld case can pull paint through a ¼” hose from 25 feet away. Larger varieties can suck paint from as far away as 150 feet, letting you move all the way around a medium-sized building without needing to move your material supply.
Besides the ability to work a good distance from the material can, hopper, etc., the high pressures airless devices generate are eminently practical for applying a great paint job. The intense pressure vaporizes the paint into tiny, highly uniform drops that coat the painting surface, drenching it thoroughly but uniformly and creating a smooth paint job without streaks, blotchiness, or marks. The paint is also blown into grooves, surface fissures (as in the case of bricks or of old planks), ensuring that no parts of the surface are left exposed or uncolored.
Graco, Wagner, HomeRight, and Titan are all companies that produce sturdy, highly functional airless paint sprayers to the highest modern standards. Their product ranges contain everything from hand-held modules that use a paint cup or a feed hose put into a can of paint or stain, to free standing or cart types that can be carried or wheeled from place to place. In this latter case, the spray gun is nothing but a dispenser, not a storage unit, and is light and small enough to be used in very awkward situations, such as while clinging to a ladder or spraying inside a very cramped space.
With close to a full horsepower on some of the larger types, airless paint sprayers must be treated with respect to avoid injuries. At 3,000 PSI, the pistons can drive paint right through human skin into the muscles beneath. In this case, professional medical services are needed to help remove the toxic paint from your body. It is best not to get injured at all – practicing self-discipline and never pointing the nozzle at other people or other part of your body will contribute strongly to this outcome.
Good spray gun nozzles for airless paint sprayers will give you exactly the finish you’re looking for. The potential of most airless systems is best focused on bigger projects where their unique abilities – fast, intense painting, good coverage, creation of smooth coats – can really shine, and can truly benefit you. Airless devices are the wave of the future in painting, but are available right now to turn painting into something fast, enjoyable, and satisfying for beginners and experts.