Thread: Painting machines

Originally Posted by Pete F

.. and the Chinese would know!

I don't see any of the guys using them complaining.
Most small Chinese machines are red, the guys building model trains etc with them must take a long time to build them at your 10 minute intervals because of eye strain.

The only time I see a colour of a machine is when I walk up to it. Once your using it the colour is forgotten about as it's the job thats important.

Dave

You are talking about hobby machines. Paint your hobby machine any colour you like, as I said above what ever floats your boat, few hobbyists spend 40 hours a week at their machines for years on end. However studies have shown that light green and grey produce the least eye strain for workers doing fine detail work. Unremarkably the industrial machines coming out of Europe are predominantly ... light green. The industrial machines coming out of the US are predominantly ... light gray [sic]. But hey, what would they know about industrial design. Of course the operator is looking at the work, but they are surrounded by that colour. The reason aircraft flight decks are grey, or variations of, is the same.

If I know Richard he couldn't give a toss about any arguments regarding colour and will paint it any colour he chooses, as he should*, but that's the reason the manufacturers paint their machines the colour they do.


* Candy Apple Red! Candy Apple Red! Candy Apple Red! Candy......

Fair enough, but in the real world do you really think the colour matters to workers.

As for candy for a first paint job, it wont come out like it should, best to stick to solid colours.

Dave

Originally Posted by Dave J

Fair enough, but in the real world do you really think the colour matters to workers.

As for candy for a first paint job, it wont come out like it should, best to stick to solid colours.

Dave

Yes I do think the colour matters in the real world. I don't like the Hercus 260 colour at all, never have never will. I've been spending quite a few hours at it each day when I've been home. The splashback is similarly coloured and I really am surrounded by it. A mill, maybe not so much just due to the nature of the work.

I think we can FINALLY agree on something Of course I am only joking about the Candy, but by heck it would look cool! Totally impractical but kool as skool! I agree it's tricky to get it just right, definitely not a rattle can job. I had a motor bike years ago that was candy blue, always loved that effect. The powder coats have come out in the same type of effects as the traditional multi layer candy/clear, but in just 2 layers. I'm busting to do something in it, but haven't been able to find a likely candidate, other than perhaps my coffee machine. So 6011 it is for my foreseeable future

Pete

Maybe it's just me, but I have never found the colour of a machine to worry me or my sight.

I am still working on a colour for the shaper, lathe and mill etc. They will all be the same colour, sort of a standard machinery colour for my shed..

Dave

Originally Posted by Dave J

Maybe it's just me, but I have never found the colour of a machine to worry me or my sight.

I am still working on a colour for the shaper, lathe and mill etc. They will all be the same colour, sort of a standard machinery colour for my shed..

Dave

Hi Dave,

This might seem funny, but the only time you really see the colour of the machine is when you take pictures... when you are using it, the focus is on the work and controls.. maybe dayglo orange would be distracting, but any colour as long as it's not too outrageous seems to work. In general however, I'm in favour of keeping to manufacturers original colours when doing machine restoration/rebuilds. You can nearly always find original paint if you look hard enough, on the Waldown, which had been badly painted with some sort of house paint, there was still original colour to get a match from on the inside of the belt cover. Same for the current Varnamo project, I got some grey mixed to match the original.

Originally Posted by CGroves AVM

Coming back to painting tips. If you go the high pressure water cleaner route you can get a sand blasting attachment for a Gerni. I did my surface grinder and having sand in the water jet made getting rust, paint and general crud out of tight places easy. It saved me getting an air compressor and blast cabinet.

For sanding back finishes I use a selection of foam rubber to back up the wet and dry paper. The harder foams e.g. will leave a flat surface, the softer ones will give nice fair curves.

Hi Christian,
About time we got away from colour and back to the business of painting..
Thanks for the tip, I'm going to see if I can get a sand blasting attachment for the karcher pressure washers.. for sanding curves, you can always use stiff leather backing, it's just flexible enough to curve nicely. The machines we've done haven't needed that level of finishing, but I've used leather pads for sanding woodwork projects.

Regards
Ray

Originally Posted by Dave J

Maybe it's just me, but I have never found the colour of a machine to worry me or my sight.

Dave

Well Dave, This makes my eyes hurt every time I look at it.

Hmmm. You got me thinking Dave and I think you make a very good point. Before I ever used a machine with a DRO I would be concentrating on how my chips forming and the dials or scribe line, nothing else matters, after DRO's it the work, chips and DRO. I'm not trying to read anything off the machine, staring at the castings or any detailed information so readability is not an issue the exception being the dials which are all black on satin finish to my knowledge. My muscles know where all the controls are without looking, and the workpiece is the detailed information that I'm responding to.

Pete, what detailed work are you referring to when talking about machine tools? For my part the biggest improvement for fine work is not the colour as much as the lighting conditions, as you can do very detailed work on any colour medium. Or are you meaning for a contrast colour, a background, eg splash back? If so then I would think a black background would be superior light grey to for lathe work as most things that would be turned in an industrial shop would be steel/aluminium and when well lit shows more contrast on matte black.


I would think that with todays OH&S workplaces all the machine tools would be high visibility day glow orange, with enough warning stickers over the high vis paint that you would not be able to see its colour anyway.

I wanted to re-paint the Varnamo shaper matte black but I got vetoed by Ray, he wants its original colour: so close to grey primer that I'm pretty sure they sit next to each other on a colour chart.


-Josh

Originally Posted by CGroves

Coming back to painting tips. If you go the high pressure water cleaner route you can get a sand blasting attachment for a Gerni. I did my surface grinder and having sand in the water jet made getting rust, paint and general crud out of tight places easy.
Christian

Yes, but...
At work we do defence stuff. Normally metals (steel especially) is grit blasted before painting to provide a good key. One of the rules is that primer must go on within a certain time period (say 6 hours) after blasting to avoid corrosion starting from atmospheric moisture. If wet blasting, the risk is increased so I would suggest that parts will need to be blasted on a hot day so the water evaporates off or heated with a fan heater afterwards to get the moisture away.

On Josh's suggestion of hi-vis machines, at a previous company the OH&S guy insisted that the welders wear hi-vis clothing (in this case stuff with reflective strips sewn on) so the clothing worn across site was uniform. Didn't think at all about the way it reflects light up under weld helmets.
My favourite hi-vis story concerns the speech given by the head of the hotel association here in Adelaide where he was decrying all this stuff, the latest being the guy filling up the condom machine in the toilets needing to wear a hi-vis vet while doing so. He wanted to know whether his topless bar attendants would be next.

Michael

Originally Posted by Michael G

Yes, but...
At work we do defence stuff. Normally metals (steel especially) is grit blasted before painting to provide a good key. One of the rules is that primer must go on within a certain time period (say 6 hours) after blasting to avoid corrosion starting from atmospheric moisture. If wet blasting, the risk is increased so I would suggest that parts will need to be blasted on a hot day so the water evaporates off or heated with a fan heater afterwards to get the moisture away.

On Josh's suggestion of hi-vis machines, at a previous company the OH&S guy insisted that the welders wear hi-vis clothing (in this case stuff with reflective strips sewn on) so the clothing worn across site was uniform. Didn't think at all about the way it reflects light up under weld helmets.
My favourite hi-vis story concerns the speech given by the head of the hotel association here in Adelaide where he was decrying all this stuff, the latest being the guy filling up the condom machine in the toilets needing to wear a hi-vis vet while doing so. He wanted to know whether his topless bar attendants would be next.

Michael

I've used a lot of Jotun 605 epoxy primer - it's quite happy with flash rust on a freshly blasted surface. Better to have no rust, but there's little or no danger of paint bond failure. As an experiment I painted some over a heavily rusted surface on an outside gantry. 3 years later some rust is coming through in spots.

As for the topless bar attendants, they could always cut a hole in the bra cup and use a contrasting colour - say candy apple red - on the protruding bits....

PDW

What was the significance of red in the head stocks and bed webbing on lathes? Iirc it was a"special" paint as well? Even older automotive gearboxes used to be painted red inside.

See attached for instruction and inspiration on brush enameling.

I have decided I like subdued colours and satin finishes, but the satin I've tried won't level from the brush.

I want a machine I live with to look more like a comfortable wife than a gaudy hooker.

Originally Posted by Anorak Bob

Well Dave, This makes my eyes hurt every time I look at it.

I'll take it off your hands to relieve you of your burden Bob.

When I bought my Hercus 260 I was all fired-up to repaint it and cover the scars left behind by the high school students. I pretty quickly realised that when I was using the machine I never saw any of these wounds.

Originally Posted by Anorak Bob

Well Dave, This makes my eyes hurt every time I look at it.

Hmmmm, there's that beautiful rotary table with the 80:1 ratio!

Nice. Ooops got side tracked!

Simon