This year the EPA enforced the 6H regulation, which required paint technicians to develop a way to clean their spray guns without spraying any of the thinner into the air. The purpose of this restriction is to reduce them amount of VOCs that are released into the environment.
In this video, I am demonstrating to the students how to clean a paint gun without using oar pressure to spray the thinner through the paint gun.
We found that a spray bottle with cleaning thinner work well for this. Here are the steps to hand clean a paint gun, while only using 2 oz. of cleaning thinner.
Tips
1. Pour remaining material in approved storage container or recycle system.
2. Press the fluid trigger and spray thinner through the gun using a spray bottle. If you are using a traditional cup, spray the sidewalls of the cup first. Have a container available for the waster thinner to gather.
3. One the stream is clear, take the fluid nozzle of and clean the nozzle and tip.
4. Spray thinner on the gun and clean with a towel to remove any final material.
5. Screw the nozzle back onto the gun and blow gun with compressed air to dry and assure that it is clean and ready for storage.
That is it! It only take a minute or two and use less than 2 oz of thinner. If cleaning a traditional cup, it may take slightly more cleaning thinner.
Minimal time and thinner used, and no VOCs sprayed into the environment.