I've had my CM-SB for few months now, and I've noticed a few issues that are bugging me.
1) The needle action is off-center in relation to the nozzle. It it seems to go through a reciprocating up and down arc as I pull back on the trigger, which causes it to dip so low that it looks like it might actually be rubbing on the nozzle. This is very scary, especially since I spent an extra $100 on a K33 needle. Some of this appears to be due to a loose tolerance between the spring screw and the needle chucking guide that allows the spring screw to wiggle in the guide, but I'm not sure if that's the only culprit, or just another symptom of the same unknown root issue.
2) Either the nozzle cap, air cap, or head piece don't align properly. When the brush first arrived, these were all assembled so that the prongs of the air cap were at a perfect vertical/horizontal cross relative to the body. After I took these pieces apart for inspection and put them back together (I did not unscrew the nozzle from the head, just head from the body, and nozzle cap and air cap from the head & each other), they would no longer so align, but instead always screw together with the prongs maybe 30 degrees short of that perfect vertical/horizontal cross. At no time have I cross-threaded anything, and I've inspected and cleaned these parts several times now looking for some bit of grit or lint or something that might be interfering with the threads, but to no avail. No matter what I do, the crown cap alignment is always off by the exact same amount. Unlike with my Eclipse, where the body/nozzle cap joint has an o-ring that can influence this sort of thing, making it never exactly the same way twice, the Micron parts screw down metal-to-metal (there is an o-ring, but it doesn't work the same way structurally), so this SHOULD be dead consistent every time, but somehow something has thrown it off and I can't figure out what.
3) Depressing the trigger for the air valve has an uncomfortable "bump", for lack of a better word. It feels like The base of the trigger doesn't center on the top of the air valve, so it wants to redirect that force backward at the pivot instead of pushing the plunger down (i.e. it wants to hyperextend the pivot, pushing the pivot back and the button forward instead of the whole trigger down). If I pull the trigger back slightly before pushing down, this doesn't happen, as the downward force is then more directly in line with the plunger. My Eclipse does this too with its stock trigger, but not with the taller Kustom-CS trigger. Neither my Paasche or Badger brushes have this issue, so it seems like a design flaw that's unique to Iwata? I guess I wasn't expecting something like this from a $500 top-of-the-line brush.
I have no idea if 2 has anything to do with 1. It seems plausible at first blush, but since the needle does that up and down arc regardless of the head (the motion seems to originate in the trigger mechanism somewhere), I don't think it's the case.
2 and 3 are mostly just annoying (2 mostly just means I can't rely on custom orientation if I ever get an aftermarket prong cap, 3 just seems like a really glaring design flaw for a $500 brush)
But 1 is REALLY scary, and kind of infuriating considering how much this brush cost. It's got me reluctant to use the brush further, and if I can't use it in confidence I'd be best off returning it (if I still can). This was a big expense and thus a big leap, so if I ended up just having to eat the cost on a brush I can't use and don't feel ethically comfortable selling would probably hurt enough to make me give up airbrushing.
What should I do?
1) The needle action is off-center in relation to the nozzle. It it seems to go through a reciprocating up and down arc as I pull back on the trigger, which causes it to dip so low that it looks like it might actually be rubbing on the nozzle. This is very scary, especially since I spent an extra $100 on a K33 needle. Some of this appears to be due to a loose tolerance between the spring screw and the needle chucking guide that allows the spring screw to wiggle in the guide, but I'm not sure if that's the only culprit, or just another symptom of the same unknown root issue.
2) Either the nozzle cap, air cap, or head piece don't align properly. When the brush first arrived, these were all assembled so that the prongs of the air cap were at a perfect vertical/horizontal cross relative to the body. After I took these pieces apart for inspection and put them back together (I did not unscrew the nozzle from the head, just head from the body, and nozzle cap and air cap from the head & each other), they would no longer so align, but instead always screw together with the prongs maybe 30 degrees short of that perfect vertical/horizontal cross. At no time have I cross-threaded anything, and I've inspected and cleaned these parts several times now looking for some bit of grit or lint or something that might be interfering with the threads, but to no avail. No matter what I do, the crown cap alignment is always off by the exact same amount. Unlike with my Eclipse, where the body/nozzle cap joint has an o-ring that can influence this sort of thing, making it never exactly the same way twice, the Micron parts screw down metal-to-metal (there is an o-ring, but it doesn't work the same way structurally), so this SHOULD be dead consistent every time, but somehow something has thrown it off and I can't figure out what.
3) Depressing the trigger for the air valve has an uncomfortable "bump", for lack of a better word. It feels like The base of the trigger doesn't center on the top of the air valve, so it wants to redirect that force backward at the pivot instead of pushing the plunger down (i.e. it wants to hyperextend the pivot, pushing the pivot back and the button forward instead of the whole trigger down). If I pull the trigger back slightly before pushing down, this doesn't happen, as the downward force is then more directly in line with the plunger. My Eclipse does this too with its stock trigger, but not with the taller Kustom-CS trigger. Neither my Paasche or Badger brushes have this issue, so it seems like a design flaw that's unique to Iwata? I guess I wasn't expecting something like this from a $500 top-of-the-line brush.
I have no idea if 2 has anything to do with 1. It seems plausible at first blush, but since the needle does that up and down arc regardless of the head (the motion seems to originate in the trigger mechanism somewhere), I don't think it's the case.
2 and 3 are mostly just annoying (2 mostly just means I can't rely on custom orientation if I ever get an aftermarket prong cap, 3 just seems like a really glaring design flaw for a $500 brush)
But 1 is REALLY scary, and kind of infuriating considering how much this brush cost. It's got me reluctant to use the brush further, and if I can't use it in confidence I'd be best off returning it (if I still can). This was a big expense and thus a big leap, so if I ended up just having to eat the cost on a brush I can't use and don't feel ethically comfortable selling would probably hurt enough to make me give up airbrushing.
What should I do?
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