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Hi.

1) I got a Renegade Khrome after a few months with the cheap china airbrush (17$) and I keep going back to the cheap china brush.
The reason is, my Khrome dries up all the time, in just seconds. I have never had that problem with the cheap one, I tried needle lube, but I must have used it wrong because I feel like it did not help at all.

2) Both my airbrushes don't have that smooth look on the spray, but splots and blobs around the "inpact point", the Khrome worse than the cheap one. I bought my Khrome used, and he swears it's nothing wrong with the airbrush, but the paint. I use Vallejo air, thin it down and spray on about 20 PSI. I feel like the needle tip is not as straight as it should be, so I might just buy a new needle too see if that helps.

3) Lastly, after 9 months of 3-5 hours use every month my compressor has started to leave condense in my airbrush hose, the compressor did come with a filter, but I know it's not ideal once the compressor gets up to temp. It's quite a lot of water too, once it started to spray out as I was painting and I could not understand where the water came from, now I do.

Anyone know what I can do about these three points?
I also need a good way to get rid of the water, all I have done now is to spray it out.

Hi and welcome to dakkadakka.

1. Break down the brush and clean it, clean the heck out of it. check the seals and make sure nothing is bent or warped or cracked.

2. Get an inline filter, between that and the one on the compressor you should be good to go. If you are trying to get water out of the hose, disconnect the hose and let gravity work....

Sorting out the problem between your Krome and your 'Cheap chinese' brush- you arent giving us enough data to work with. So I'll try to fill in the blanks and cover the most likely scenarios:

1. If I have to make a guess, the chinese airbrush isn't getting the tip dry becuase its using a larger nozzle- most likely a .5mm or maybe a .3 mm. Most Kromes ship with a .21mm

Even going from .3mm to a .21mm make a large difference in performance- as thats a 33% smaller nozzle the paint must go through.

My detail brush is SOTAR, which shares the same tip and needle design as the KROME has- I live in Arizona which usually has 10-20% humidity and I don't have much issue with tip dry more than other brushes- even my chinese brush with a similar size nozzle

One other possibility I jsut thought of- is your Kromes needle may have a bent tip. As fine as a .21 needle is you cant always see it, but if you have a magnifier, examine your needle and the spray tip. look for any scratches, or a bent tip. A scratch, and especially a bent tip in a hook shape I have found cause rapid build up of paint when spraying. Rather than flowing around the needle, it sticks to those rough patches, and once a little starts to stick, more and more piles on. If thats the problem, it is possible to polish the needle tip if you have a steady hand and a whetstone or some 1600-2000 grit sand paper.



2-The blob issue you describe- thats 'operator error'. Too much paint is flowing out, too close to the surface, and too fast. so the paint basically pools up, starts to dry, then gets pushed away leaving globby tracks. If you look up 'spidering' this sounds like you have a really extreme version of it going on. If you're spraying at 20 psi, and spraying close- you're likely putting too much paint on. Try going slower, less paint per layer, try for very thin layers- as you want each thin layer to fully dry before you come back for another pass. Thin layers only take a few seconds to dry, so don't feel like you have get full color coverage all at once. Keep in mind some guys run the Krome down to like 5-8 psi just to avoid the spidering effects when working up close- dont be afraid to experiment, as long as you can get the paint to flow its all good!

3. Your getting more moisture because its summer time- the first 3 months were still winter conditions, the last 6 were spring and summer conditions? Hence warmer and higher humidity?

For that you need a moisture trap, there should be several articles and youtube videos you can google on that which can go into great detail(and be more helpful than a vague description here could be).

Does your compressor have a tank? If it does not thats a bit more of an issue, since tanked compressors do us a huge favor and grab alot of the moisture before it enters the air line.

If you look at my recent threads on airbrush discussions- one of them discussed compressors and air tanks- and options for making inline tanks. My internet is being horrible and I can't find it myself right now. BUt I've set up some custom tanks to help deal with issues like yours- but Im not familiar with the hardware available to you in Norway

Also- are you near the coast? I just realized if you have alot of salt in the air- it could be affecting your paint and may be causing some of your issues(just speculation- but call it an educated guess)