Spray Booth Maintenance
Maintaining your spray booth is essential to ensure safe and effective spray applications. Booth maintenance can be broken into three main subsections. First is filter maintenance, second is gauge maintenance, and third is booth interior maintenance, and fourth is booth equipment maintenance.
Filters are designed to stop overspray from exiting through the spray booth’s exhaust and causing objects outside the building to be painted. Filters should be replaced based on two cues. Visually if the air in a booth is becoming “lazy” which means you can visably see paint hanging in the air it is time to change the filters regardless of what a measuring device like a manometer may read. The other reason to change filters is if a properly calibrated manometer reads that the filters are resisting airflow to much, which is an indication that they are becoming less effective at stoping spray.
A properly calibrated manometer is essential to proper booth monitoring. To calibrate a manometer you start by replacing all filters in a booth with clean filters. You then go to the outside of the booth and with the fan off set the manometer gauge to read 0. Next you start the booth up and note the position of the gauge oil and place a green mark. This represents your clean benchmark and is the place your pressure is with completly clean filters. You then look at the manometer and move up 0.4 inches of pressure on the gauge, not actually measuring 0.4 inch but using the gauge markings. So if your clean bench mark shows at 0.1 you would then place a secondary mark at 0.5, this second line represents when you should change the filters and is best marked in red.
In addition to filter maintenance, booth coating and booth paper are important considerations for increasing the longevity of your booth. By using booth coating and paper you benefit by having a brighter working area and eliminating spray coating the walls of the booth itself which over time can ruin the spray area.
Finally, it is important to maintain the booth exhaust fan as well. Within the factory manual for your booth will be a maintenance program that outlines all the important and vital activities that should be undertaken to manage your booths fan or other important components. As always if you have booth problems like the fan running incorrectly or you notice air not moving consult a professional to help find the source of the problem. By following these tips you can have a booth last for many years and help provide a quality finish for your product while keeping your facility in compliance with fire safety codes and regulations.