Hey all,
Ive had my Paasche Millennium for over 12 years now which has had casual use off and on. Its never been a joy to use, mainly due to its tendency to dump a gob of paint out when the tip gets dry and you pull back on the trigger. Trying to regulate that paint flow in such a narrow area of travel makes your hand ache like crazy too. Last night I was sprayin on my 1/35 panther model and was using the trigger stop knob to prevent it from getting too wide a spray pattern. Tamiya acrylics thinned roughly to 50/50 ratio with tamiya thinner. The paint flow will routinely taper off to nothing coming out. Your constantly having to tweak the trigger to resume paint flow and its never consistent with any trigger position. This brush has actually turned me off to dual action brushes, its been such a pain. The needle and tip were replaced awhile ago with what I thought were the standard middle size but the needle does seem thicker than the original. Using the thinnest tip and needle the thing is even more finicky and the paint dries even sooner. Can anyone thats familiar with Paasches offer any advice? When adding more thinner I usually get runs, when lowering the pressure I get small blotches. Im pretty much at the point of ditching this thing and just getting an Iwata.
Lastly, a nice finisher to my misery of using this damned brush I get a nice gush of water on the turret before the paint runs out. My moisture trap and regulator are not in an optimal angle (see below) because the point at which it tightens is not vertical. Will this prevent the moisture trap from working effectively? Water shooting out of this thing is pretty random but it does happen. Thanks to anyone who can lend a hand here,
Steve

First, ditch the Paasche. I have a drawer full of them. None of them work. Get the Iwata or a Badger. You'll be happy.
Second: Your water trap cannot function like that. At all., do whatever is necessary to get it mounted vertical.

definately get the iwata i have a revolution and for finer paint control i am geting the iwata hpc you will spend some good money on either of these two but it will be worth every nickel and iwata has great customer support i know first hand because my iwata broke mysteriously but they replaced it free also you MUST have the moisture trap in the vertical so gravity will pull it from the air you are using further i can not tell but you should also have an air resivor so that you can maintain a constant pressure and last be sure to not use a whole lot of paint at once because it will start to dry before it spays unfortunately you will need to expirment with this a little due to your geographic location ie ambient temp and humidity oh yes and after some painting you will need to stop and clean the airbrush this is because of the nature of acrylic paint so plan stop points when painting and try using 10-18psi because more than that will really speed the drying of the acrylic paint and cause dry paint particles to contaminate your wet paint surface well thats all i can think of right now hope this helps

I agree. I had to add a 2" extention to my compressor to get the moisture trap to sit properly.

Chris

if you can not put the water trap in the verticle go to the harware store and get a brass or steel pipe nipple and install that between the tank and moisture trap and remember 10-18psi flowing pressure the psi will increase on the gauge when air is not flowing

Set er up like this and problems will go away.

Mike

Thanks for the input, everyone. All in all I just don't think that the Millennium is cut out for the task of doing smaller lighter work like I do. Doesn't seem like many people use this model of Paasche for hobby work. It doesnt seem to really agree with acrylics either. Maybe lacquer based paint would be more compatible but that's not an option for me. I will most definitely figure out a way to get this moisture trap in the vertical position. It didnt seem like the right way to orient it Last but not least I will be ordering my Iwata Eclipse in the next few days

I've had my fair share of airbrush problems and I've pretty much come up with a solution that works for me.

First I would ditch the Paasche. Get an Iwata

Second try using a lacquer thinner.

Clean down with lacquer thinner (the strong stuff from an auto repair shop). Even if you don't use it to thin the paint. It's fairly cheap and works better than airbrush cleaner. Read the warnings on the can tho.

Use Tamiya paint retarder. Since using this I've not had a single dry tip !!

Hope that helps.

I don't mean to hijack your thread, but this question may be useful. Does it matter what lacquer thinner you mix with Tamiya acryls? I have some Floquil lacquer thinner and was wondering if I can use it.

It should work......give it a try on a scrap model and
evaluate the results.

Cheers,
Joe