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Hey gents,

I was hoping some of you fine folks on Dakka could help me out. My Iwata Eclipse HP-CS has been giving me some trouble lately. Today, I ran just water through her and she was bubbling up quite a bit in the paint cup. On top of that, my spray wasn't smooth and consistent. The water was coming out in very quick and regular spurts, kinda like a lawn sprinkler. I took her apart and cleaned the nozzle, but it was pretty clean already. Not sure what else to do at this point.

I had another issue I resolved a few days ago that may or may not be related. I had a sticky trigger but cleared that up nicely with some lube into the trigger hole, not sure if perhaps something there could be affecting the body. Up until recently I was using an ultrasonic cleaner with Windex to clean the parts after every session, stopped doing that when I read on the Iwata forum that that's bad for the components and the O-rings in particular.

I run my airbrush through an Aspire TC908 compressor at about 18 PSI, if that's relevant at all.

It sounds like the nozzle is blocked or the needle isnt coming back far enough, i find it hard to see how clean the nozzle is on the inside and have had the same problem and cleaning it with methlated sprit helped, Hope you get it sorted

Ultrasonics are the worst for airbrushes, they just distribute crap all through the brush to places it doesn't need to be.

Your airbrush is dirty, you need to clean the nozzle out better. Get the needle into the nozzle and really clean it out.

kb_lock wrote:
Ultrasonics are the worst for airbrushes, they just distribute crap all through the brush to places it doesn't need to be.

If this is your experience with ultrasonic cleaners then there's something very wrong. This is especially true if the airbrush in question is an Iwata HP-CS (or BCS). That said, I do agree that there's probably still something in the nozzle that needs to get cleaned out.


@creeping-deth87-

Get your hands on a bottle or two of rubbing alcohol. I use the 91% stuff, but a bit more dilute is okay. Spray it through your airbrush (have excellent ventilation for this, it stinks). Hold your finger over the nozzle periodically to redirect flow back into the cup. Let it sit for a bit to give the alcohol time to work on any dried paint. Crank the pressure on your air compressor as high as it will go (usually about 40 psi) and blast rubbing alcohol through it. Unless you have foreign matter, an epic clog, or damage in the nozzle, this should be more than adequate to fix the problem. If it doesn't work, you'll need to do a deep cleaning.

Disassemble your airbrush. Be sure to take out the needle packing set because it can cause some funky problems when it gets dirty and most people don't know it exists or that it needs to come out for deep cleaning (it screws in behind the cup, you can remove it with a small flathead screwdriver when the back end of the airbrush is taken apart). The beauty of the HP-CS design is that the main body of the airbrush will stand on end when the nozzle and head cap are removed from the front of the airbrush. Place the main body of the disassembled airbrush on end (nozzle side down) in your empty ultrasonic cleaner. Set all of the disassembled parts in there too. Add rubbing alcohol until the level of the liquid is above the cup of the airbrush, but below the air valve. This allows you to get cleaner into all parts of the airbrush that normally see paint. If the brush falls over, no biggie, just stand it back up again. Run the ultrasonic cleaner for a few cycles and pay attention to anywhere you see plumes of paint. During one of the cycles (but not the last one) pull out the nozzle. Gently rub an old needle around inside the nozzle and push it through a few times. If you feel any gunk, fish it out. Give it a few more cycles in the alcohol. Then hold the nozzle in front of a light (small end towards the light, large end towards your face). It should look like a train tunnel - a small dot of light surrounded by darkness. If you don't see light, you have more gunk to fish out and more cycles to run. The alcohol will dissolve paint, so if you don't see light though the nozzle, you my have foreign matter in there.

Once you've seen the light, rinse the airbrush and parts in water. Rinse out the ultrasonic cleaner and put your airbrush and parts back in as before. Fill with water, again above the cup but below the air valve. Run for a cycle to remove any trace of alcohol and then dry, lube, and reassemble the airbrush.

I've been airbrushing for years with an HP-CS and I've never had this not work (and only rarely does the airbrush need to be completely disassembled). As a matter of prevention, I shoot rubbing alcohol followed by water through the airbrush as part of every color change and after every painting session. It's cheap, does no harm whatsoever to the airbrush or O rings, and it prevents problems - so there's no good reason not too. If the problem persists, you can safely rule out a cleanliness issue and move on to further troubleshooting.

Hope this helps.