Airless paint sprayers are the latest in painting technology. They have been popular with professional painters for a few years now, but are becoming more and more popular with DIY painters as well. And they are becoming more cost effective and accessible too.
Whether you’re a DIY painter or a professional, maintaining your airless sprayer is key to ensuring its longevity. You can get years of use from a good-quality airless sprayer if you maintain it properly.
To help you, PaintAccess CEO, Dan, and paint industry influencer, Harriet, have a brand new video in which they clean a Graco Magnum ProX17 Electric Airless Paint Sprayer.
This step-by-step video demonstrates the best way to clean your airless sprayer.
Safety first!
First, Dan ensures that everyone is wearing appropriate PPE. Safety equipment isn’t just for painting. Cleaning painting tools and equipment means exposure to the same paint and other products as if you were painting. It might not necessarily be front-of-mind when you’re done for the day (or you’ve finished your painting project after a few weekends) and it’s time to clean up. But when you’re cleaning an airless paint sprayer, there’s the possibility of splashing or spraying water and so gloves are a great idea and covering your eyes with safety goggles is a must.
Step-by-step cleaning procedure
You're ready to go; you have all of your equipment ready and you have your safety gear on. Start with...
Step 1
The first step is to remove any excess paint from within the paint sprayer’s system. You’ll need about 3 buckets of clean water (normal paint buckets will work). Dan starts by wiping off excess paint, and then placing the paint suction tube into a bucket of water. In priming mode with the prime valve open, spray excess paint in the line back into your bucket of paint. When there’s no more paint in the spray hose or drain tubes (and the sprayer starts to spray mostly water) transfer the spray gun to an empty waste bucket.
There's no need to use warm water, but it can help to make hoses and tubes more pliable and flexible which can help to clear paint more quickly.
Step 2
From there, you can remove the spray gun tip to open the line completely and remove all water and residual paint. Continue in the prime/clean mode until there’s only clear water coming from the spray gun. You can clean your spray tips separately or put them back on your spray gun to clean them at the end of Step 2. Cleaning yous paint spray gun tips separately ensures better paint flow when you next use your sprayer, regardless of the type of paint you use.
Some models - including the Graco Magnum ProX17 - can be connected to a regular garden hose to provide water at-pressure to the pump for cleaning. But the pump is capable of moving water through the system (from a bucket) just as effectively.
Remember, you can easily clean your airless paint sprayer with water if you have used it to spray a water-soluble paint, water-based paint or latex paint. But if your sprayer was used to apply oil-based paint, you may need to add diluted paint thinners to your cleaning water to create a more effective cleaning solution and move things along. Oil paint can be more difficult to remove but other than the addition of paint thinner, the cleaning process is the same.
Step 3
Then it’s time for some pump armour. Dan starts with a few squirts of pump armour into the piston housing then puts the extractor hose directly into the bottle of pump armour and pumps liquid through the system until it reaches the spray gun. In this case, the pump armour is an easy-to-identify blue colour.
While there's no need to use specialised oil for piston pumps (your pump armour should do the job) you can buy specific products for this purpose.
Then Dan removes the spray gun filter from the line that is attached to the spray gun. In this case, it's a relatively clean filter that has been used once and so needs no additional attention, but Dan shows how easy it is to find and remove the filter for cleaning should that be necessary.
Step 4
From there, your airless paint sprayer is ready to go into storage where it can sit until you need it for your next project.
To get your airless spray gun ready for your next project, simply take it from storage, check the pump for any corrosion and the fluid intake or paint inlet hose, prime hose, and suction hose for any blockages, prime your system, and start painting.
A quick and simple process for taking proper care of your electric airless paint sprayer, maintaining your sprayer performance, and adding years to the life of your equipment. And remember, Dan and Harriet demonstrated this process on a popular Graco model, but you can follow these easy cleaning steps to clean different types of paint sprayers, including handheld paint sprayers.
Get the gear you need
If you want to buy any of the great products in this video, you can order them online from https://www.paintaccess.com.au/. That includes the Graco Magnum ProX17 Electric Airless Paint Sprayer, pump armour and a range of cleaning products and tools.
And if you’re in Sydney and want to check out our Testing Bar, come and visit our Matraville store. When we say “try before you buy”, we mean it. You can even bring your paint sprayer into the shop and we'll show you how to clean it or book it in for a full service if needed.
BorisDoes is here to help!
As always, if you need some help with your painting project, or you’d like the result without doing the work yourself, you can start a task or request a quote at BorisDoes. BorisDoes is an Australian task marketplace that connects Customers throughout Australia with Taskers and Businesses near them. Find the right tradie, expert or professional to help you with your task on BorisDoes.
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