Can I Make A Good Thing Better?
One Thing Niggled Me…
I’ve been really pleased with my Acteckart ‘No Clean’ airbrush system. It’s not for everyone, if you are a fan of airbrushing and use an airbrush on a regular basis in your model making then a conventional compressor based system makes sense. I, on the other hand, use an airbrush only occasionally and I neither have the space, time or money to run a compressor system.
You have to balance your particular needs and in my case convenience is a major priority when I am juggling a lot of different types of model making projects at the same time. I need something that I can pick up easily, that works straight away and that - then - may not be used for a period after that.
The Acteckart is ideal for me. It can be popped into a draw out of the way, so takes up no desk space, does not need any real prep to set up for use, just works, and does not need a lot of cleaning (*though calling it ‘no clean’ is perhaps stretching the point*) particularly when you want to change colours during you painting session.
So what’s the problem then?
My one little niggle about the Acteckart is with the core advantage it has - it’s quick change paint reservoir...
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| Above: Bigger reservoir bottles kinda mean you have to use quite a lot of paint to ensure consistent feed through the system. This is a draw back of the way the large bottle fits horizontally into the feed nozzle. |
The removable paint container that this system uses if a screw in bottle rather than the ‘cup’ type paint container that is used in practically all other airbrush systems. This removable bottle is how the Acteckart archives it’s quick change and ‘no clean’ feature, as - with a conventionally airbrush - you have to take apart the brush itself (to a degree) to ensure that the innards are clean of one paint colour before using another.
However, it’s the size of Acteckart's bottle reservoir that I have an issue with. Just as I only airbrush occasionally, likewise I only really do relatively small jobs so only need a modest reservoir of paint (roughly an eighth of what is available via the included bottles). And this has an effect of the efficiency of the paint flow as the Acteckart seems to work best when the bottle is at least a quarter full.
With just a small amount of paint in the bottle you end up having to constantly tip the airbrush so that what paint there is gets to the nozzle end. (Acteckart do include some shot pieces of tubing which you can insert into the nozzle end that extends the ‘reach’ down to the bottle of the bottle. SO they obviously recognised that you looks paint flow when the brush is tipped back and the paint doesn’t come up to the nozzle end of the brush.)
Solving my Niggle
My initial solution to this problem was just to put more ain’t into the bottle than I actually need, ensuring that it fed the nozzle efficiently. But this is quite wasteful, particularly when you are a model maker who uses the small bottle of paint - you can easily empty about an 8th of your paint pot into the Acteckart bottle to ensure that it works smoothly!!!
Likewise, the solution isn’t exactly to just use the accessory tube to reach the bottom of the bottle as there are - even then - still some issues when you tip the brush to paint at different angles when spraying your model.
What I really need is to bring the smaller amount of paint that I generally use CLOSER to the nozzle at the front of the feed system somehow.
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| Above: I started to think about whether I could rig up a way to bypass using the big bottle by replacing it with a traditional airbrush cup? But how would I join these two parts together |
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| Above: Unfortunately I couldn't just stick the feed tube of the cup straight into the Acteckart's feed cap BUT this was what I figured I needed to do. So how could I make the cup attach to the feed cap securely enough to feed the paint through to the nozzle??? |
Thinking about it, what would have really been handy would have been if Acteckart had included a small cup type reservoir in the set which you could clip directly into the feed instead of the larger bottle.
And this got me wondering if I could cobble together some sort of Heath Robinson sort of fudge where I could insert a spare paint cup from one of my old conventional sir brushed INTO the Acteckart feed end???
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| Above: My solution was to design and 3D print an adapter to connect the cup and the feed cap together and to then run through a piece of plastic pipe (that comes with the Actchart set to aid gravity spraying) to feed the paint from the cup to the nozzle! |
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| Above: My solution was a bit unsophisticated but I wanted to make a proof of concept so it didn't need to be complex, just show that the idea was feasible. I soon had the print and connected together the parts... The good news was that they actually all went together nicely! |
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| Above: The moment of truth! I poured a small amount of paint into the cup... Would it spray??? |
As you can tell from the included photos, this is exactly what I attempted and I was very pleased when my first experiment actually worked! There were some concerns over consistent flow, as the Acteckart was not designed to work like this, but I was able to spray a coat of paint out of the little cup.
Job Done? Not Exactly…
Well, while kinda pleased with my ingenuity I was a little conserved about the quality of the spray flow - as there was some splattering - so my little contraption does need some refining. This will be the next stage in my modification, having sorta proved that the idea is feasible I now have to come up with a a more solid version of my cup system…
I want to do the following:-
1. Change the angle of the cups feed pipe (at the moment the cup ‘leans’ to far forward risking spillages out the top of the cup if I point the airbrush downwards).
2. Come up with a way to connect the cup solidly in place as part of the 3D printed adaptor that I have designed (at the moment it fits into place just by friction).
3. Redesign my adapter so that it screws into the nozzle cap piece as at the moment it is just an insert that - again - is held in place by friction.
So this is what I will be working on next. But at least I feel I have got somewhere!
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