sidefeed vs gravity

[IlluminatedRS]

I’ve never understood the “straight down the barrel” argument. You can’t look straight down, the trigger and your finger are in the way. Your view is always from top right or top left depending on your dominant hand. [emoji848]

Unless your using a side / syphon feed "pistol grip" Grex TS / iwata Neo type airbrush...best of both worlds then.


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[JackEb]

Unless your using a side / syphon feed "pistol grip" Grex TS / iwata Neo type airbrush...best of both worlds then.


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But even with the pistol grip you don't naturally look 'straight down the barrel'.. you could if you wanted to, but its not a natural position.

 

[Electric Cat Dude]

I have read plenty of reports where people will claim one type has the advantage over the other, even from some very experienced professionals. I have a rather large collection with which I am constantly testing, and I can find no real difference between them on a purely physical basis. The paint is drawn from the color/paint reservoir from each style of feed by exactly the same mechanism. Once the paint has a chance to fill the paint channel, surround the needle - you could empty any remaining paint from each of them, and they would continue to spray exactly the same way they did until you depleted the paint remaining in the brush.

It comes down to a personal preference, whether perceived or not...

Yes. For a while my CW had been that gravity fed airbrushes have a tendency to outperform siphon fed airbrushes because the gravity fed guns could work at lower air pressures due to not having to feed paint into their color channels and spray regulators. After haven’t gotten my hands on a Harder and Steenbeck Grafo T2, I’ve had to rethink that evaluation as that airbrush can spray lines finer than any other airbrush I own.

I think the major advantage to gravity fed airbrush is that the paint cup is usually self contained on the gun. Therefore you don’t have other components that have to be removed and cleaned along with the airbrush. Color changes also seem faster with a gravity fed as well - Remove the excess paint from the color cup, wipe down the inside of the color cup with a cleaner soaked cotton swab, then flush the gun out with a color cup full of cleaner. Advantages to a siphon fed brush are positionable color reservoirs that allow for spraying at any angle and don’t obstruct the view of the artwork.

it’s been my experience that with water based paints, airbrush performance begins to degrade or become non-functional once the air pressure at the spray regulator drops below about 10 psi. This happens regardless of whether you were using a gravity or side fed airbrush. I suspect the reason is that a siphon draw out the head always occurs between the two brushes and the nozzle diameter of most fine detail guns will not allow pure gravity feed without the surface tension of the paint interfering with this. Put simply, you have to supply the airbrush with a minimum air pressure in order to suck the paint through the nozzle and needle gap, regardless of whatever feed design is used.

 

[palk]

I was going to go all theoretical on why side feeds should not work better than a fixed gravity cup, but I would probably boor people with my waffle.
Other than to say a fixed gravity cup is a good bit easier to clean.

 

[IlluminatedRS]

I have one of the Grex tritium TS3 airbrushes, so it's a side feed left or right and it can take either gravity feed cups or side. Feed siphons bottles, so kind of best of both worlds.


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[erwin de pan]

It's just what you're used to.
I'd rather have my CM-sb than my CM-b. Because I can clean it easier.
If something is stuck in the nozzle I take my paint cub off and put my bottle with cleaning agent on it.
Clean. paint cub back on and you can continue.
With the B I have first put the paint in a bottle (if there is enough left) and clean the whole airbrush.
When I stop I throw the cubs (sb) into the ultrasonic. And meanwhile clean the airbrush.

 

[Electric Cat Dude]

It's just what you're used to.
I'd rather have my CM-sb than my CM-b. Because I can clean it easier.
If something is stuck in the nozzle I take my paint cub off and put my bottle with cleaning agent on it.
Clean. paint cub back on and you can continue.
With the B I have first put the paint in a bottle (if there is enough left) and clean the whole airbrush.
When I stop I throw the cubs (sb) into the ultrasonic. And meanwhile clean the airbrush.

Personally never found any advantages in re cleaning between siphon fed vs gravity feed. If anything siphon feed gives you one extra item that needs to be cleaned during color changes. I loaded an unload paint out of my airbrushes using a small syringe, which makes it very easy to drain out extra paint in a cup to clean it.

 

[erwin de pan]

For color changes I have several cubs.
So I can switch very quickly between different colors.
Back and forward.
It doesn't matter to me if I throw 1 cub or 5 in the ultrasonic.