Tried a cheap paint gun off Amazon and it cost me a full respray

Picked up a $60 HVLP gun from some no-name brand off Amazon after my main one went down for cleaning. Figured it'd be fine for a quick job on a buddy's fender, but two coats in and the pattern was all over the place. Ended up with orange peel in some spots and runs in others, so I had to strip it back down and respray with my old Devilbiss. Cost me an extra three hours and a whole quart of paint. Anybody else get burned trying to save a few bucks on a spray gun?

3 comments

3 Comments

anthonynelson7d ago

Wait the Chinese factory that makes those $60 guns doesn't do ANY quality control on the air cap or needle? That's insane. I figured they at least checked if the thing could atomize paint before shipping it out. So you're basically getting a random nozzle that might be drilled crooked or have a burr on the tip. My pattern looked like a deformed jellyfish no matter what I did with the fan control. Makes total sense now why I couldn't even get a half decent spray out of it.

wader717d ago

Tossed a cheap gun in my cart once myself, thinking it would get me through a weekend project. Learned the hard way that the nozzle and air cap tolerances on those budget guns are just not consistent. You end up fighting the tool instead of focusing on the paint, and like you said, it costs you more in materials and time than you saved on the gun. Take it from someone who's been there, stick with a name brand that puts out a decent pattern right out of the box. The Devilbiss was the right call, your buddy lucked out you had a backup.

fionafoster7d ago

I was reading an old car restoration forum last week and a guy said something that stuck with me: cheap spray guns are just expensive paint strainers. He was talking about how the Chinese factory that stamps out those $60 guns doesn't do any quality control on the air cap or needle. You get whatever came off the line that day. I've also heard from a few painter YouTubers that they'll buy cheap guns just to toss the internals and swap in name brand parts, but at that point you're not saving money anymore. You're just buying a body that might leak from the threads. The pattern issues you had are exactly what they warned about, inconsistent atomization that shows up as orange peel or runs no matter how you adjust the fluid knob. Honestly, your Devilbiss probably paid for itself the moment you had to strip that fender.