Thread: Experiences with Wagner W450SE airless spray gun

I agree Jill, these things are pretty dreadful, thats why I tried to talk you into something like the eager beaver, I've had mine for years and given it heaps, it just keeps on coming up trumps! from cars to fine furniture it's the next best thing to a compressor driven spray unit

Ooops... Thanks anyway Dave. I have to learn the hard way, as usual

I have read the manual a bit closer. You are supposed to take the swirl valve and nozzle out after finishing the main session. Did this, and found them to be quite clean, as I had been spraying clean water through the gun between coats using my spare pot.

You then add oil and run the gun briefly ( without paint or any other fluid?) Presumably this lubricates the pump.

I find the container nearly emptied before spluttering when I was running water through the gun - perhaps I should have thinned the paint more so that it flowed more easily through the filter at the bottom of the intake pipe. I suspect this may have been clogging up a bit.

Perhaps even put a couple of marbles in the pot to keep the paint and Floetrol mixing.

Well, I finally found some good information on the Wagner site here, which provided much more information than the user manual that came with it. In fact I found the manual was a bit misleading in places, esp in relation to cleaning the spraygun. At the end of each session you are supposed to fully dismantle the moving parts of the gun and clean, ie., take the pump off and dismantle it and clean with a brush supplied.

I bought two more items to try out - a 0.6mm circular nozzle instead of the standard 0.8mm nozzle that came with the unit, and the suction extension kit that sucked directly from the paint tin.

I also decided to thin the paint more that I did in my first attempts in earlier posts to this thread. Wagner recommend 25-50 sec viscosity, but after adding 25% Floetrol and 150mm water to 1.0 litre of Taubman's "3 in 1" primer, I still could not achieve anywhere near this viscosity, so decided to run with it. In the end, with the smaller 0.6mm nozzle, it took 4 litres of primer to coat 20 sq.m of doors. This is way in excess of the recommended coverage of 12 sq.m per litre on the label

The other key thing that I did was to try out the fine adjustment knob on the rear of the spraygun, to get as uniform a circular pattern as possible, and this gave a much better pattern that the one shown above, with nearly a uniform circular pattern resulting, rather than the donut shape originally achieved.

The gun is still very heavy, and my arm was trembling with exhaustion at the end of a session spraying 3 large doors.

The suction extension kit hose is only 1.8m long, so you have to hold the end of the hose in the paint tin and take it with you, tin in one hand, gun in the other. During the time it takes the paint to travel the 1.8m from the tin to the gun, the gun is operating without any fluid for a minute or so, some thing that is warned about in the manual. It is easy for the hose and filter on the end to come out of the paint ( evidenced by heavy splutters on your workpiece), so I used a 2 litre tin with a handle and held that and the hose tightly. Carrying a 4 litre tin of paint around would be very tiring. I found the edge clip supplied by Wagner to hold the hose to the edge of the paint tin is useless, so I had to grip the hose against the handle of the tin to keep it in position at all times. All the same, this was not enough to stop the tin from tipping over at one stage in the middle of the job - paint everywhere, on floor, shoes, power cord, extension cord connector etc. What a mess!!

The beauty of the suction extension kit is that you can see when the paint level is getting down to the level where it starts sucking air through the filter, and can refill before the splutters start. With a 2 litre container, it carries 2.5 times the amount of paint in the pot that is normally used on the gun. If anyone can suggest a method of making the tin and the suction kit hose stable and the hose locked in position, that would be truly appreciated.

The other interesting thing is that by reducing the volume output to 12.5%, and holding the gun close to the work, you can do the edges of the doors quite well.

Overall, I feel I have come a long way since my first effort above. The gun requires a lot of trial and error to work properly with water based paints, but once that is done the results are much better than the HVLP I was using previously - much quicker. Its weight is a problem on big jobs, and the suction extension kit, although virtually increasing the size of the pot, still requires the tin of paint and hose to be carried around on the job, and still requires the hose to be manually held in position.

The smaller diameter nozzle made quite a difference, as did the fine adjustment knob and the thinning of the paint. Pity I couldn't get the paint any thinner, but I did not get any runs on the doors done standing vertically. In fact there was a fair bit of orange peel effect where I got too close. You cannot use this gun on a horizontal surface unless you buy a separate flexible extension that points downwards

Thsi gun is not really suitable for fine work. It is intended for a heavy application quickly, on walls etc. This link shows the correct applications for this airless spraygun

Hope this helps other people considering buying this unit.

These cheap "airless" spray guns are really not much more than toys and depending on the type of work you need to do they can be quite frustrating. Practice practice with it and get the viscosity right and you should be able to spray at around 300mm from the surface. Airless spray painting has a great reputation and is a terrific method of painting. Unfortunately a cheap airless spray is like buying a cheap tool of any description, it wont do the job of the more expensive tools.

I was painting with airless equipment for many years but the equipment I used cost in the region of $5000 so hardly comparable with a $300 dollar spray gun. It has always been my contention with spray painting equipment, to overkill for the application you are going to use it for. If you need a 5cfm for the task, buy a 10cfm for the job and you wont be disappointed. Believe me, there is no such thing as a good, cheap airless spray machine. I was using these machines for over 20 years and tried them all. Wagner is one of the best machines but not cheap if you want a good one. With top of the line machines you don't even need to thin the paint, it will spray straight from the can but like I said, very costly for that kind of a machine.

Having said that, the little gun you have bought will do small jobs quite admirably once you learn how to use it and don't expect too much from it.

If you use the gun frequently and going to use it again in a few hours, it is not really necessary to disassemble the gun completely every time you use it. Manufacturers go a bit overboard in their instructions. Spraying water through the gun until it is clear will do the job for you but once in a while and if you are going to store the gun for a while, then take it apart and give it a good clean. you can control the paint flow with the controls of the gun to suit your needs when spraying but that is something you will learn as you go along. Good luck with it.

BTW there is no comparison between an airless spray gun and a compressor spray gun if you want to spray acrylic paints, compressed air will not atomize acrylics or water based paints successfully.

Originally Posted by JillB

Thsi gun is not really suitable for fine work. It is intended for a heavy application quickly, on walls etc..

you should be able to regulate the gun for fine work regardless, that is the beauty of airless spray if you get the combination just right, there is little or no overspray.

I would recommend to anyone contemplating purchasing an airless spray gun or machine who has little or no experience with them to try and see a demonstration of the gun they intend to purchase or if that isn't possible , hire one from a plant hire company and you can find out for yourself if the equipment fills your needs before you spend a few hundred dollars and find out its not powerful enough for your requirements.

Many thanks for your wise comments, John, much appreciated.

Actually I thought $300 was pretty expensive for a DIY spray gun Then you have to get the extras, in my case another pot, a suction extension kit, and a couple of different size nozzles, and a couple of swirl valves, as they wear out quickly, esp with acrylic water based paints.

As you say, the trick is to practice, practice, practice and get comfortable with the limitations of the gun, and then to practice some more

Gee that gun is heavy!!

Jill,
We use an old Wagner paint crew which is a hopper style unit. One thing that prevented a lot of trouble (I think) was that all product was put through a kitchen strainer with a stocking over it. Paint was used at full strength, the unit has done a lot of work and only recently required its first part. That was my fault, I will not lend it again, it was'nt cleaned properly. Perhaps both worthwhile tips.
Regards, Bill

I would buy a clean paint tin of the size you want and cut a hole in the lid to pass the pickk up through. Medium pressure to fit the lid and you have a fitted system. You could also add a O ring or similar onto the hose on the can side to stop it pulling out.