Let's Clean A Syphon gun

Let’s clean a spyhon gun!

Figure 1- A dirty, flithy, messy syphon gun
Let’s first start by dismantling it!

Remove the bottom pot by adjusting the latch which attaches the pot to the rest of the gun!

Now let’s remove the syphon attachment from the gun! Remember to use your wrench and make sure it fits snugly around the nut before loosening it! Otherwise you might damage it!

 

Now let’s remove our good friend Mister Cap! He contains the nozzle and is where the air stream hits the fluid to atomize it! Man, talk about a hard job! No tools necessary for this part! It’s just a standard hand job!

Now let’s remove the nozzle! Make sure not to damage the nut with the wrench!

The next part is to remove the material knob from the back.

This allows you to take the fluid needle out. When you pull back the trigger on the gun this part moves and controls the air and fluid going through the tubes.

Now back to the syphon mechanism…. First unscrew the syphon tube…

Then take off the gasket and dismantle the rest… There’s a nut holding the top of the pot to the rest of the mechanism. Make sure not to damage it with your wrench!

 

 

Now that everything is disassembled let’s start cleaning it with lacquer thinner. Ultimately the solvent you use will depend on what was in the pot beforehand…

Take all the smaller parts and submerge them in lacquer thinner while you wipe down the larger parts.

Use your nylon bristled brush to scrub things down! Use those bristles baby!

The plastic can get stained by the fluids in the pot so don’t worry if it’s a bit tinted…

It’s handy to have a rag nearby. It helps if you wipe off the lacquer thinner right after a good scrubbing otherwise you might have left over streaks on the metal.

In your tool kit should be various sized pipe cleaners. Use them to clean the holes and more “tube-like” components of the gun. Dipping them in lacquer thinner before can help improve their effectiveness.

Keep the clean parts separate from the dirty parts. Otherwise you risk getting them contaminated and having to clean them all over again. Talk about lame…

The second to last thing I do is scrub the pot clean. I find it’s helpful to keep my hand on the top to apply pressure to help hold it against the table. This way I can get more vigorous with my scrubbing and really use those bristles baby! If you put smaller components in the pot with some lacquer thinner, this also helps keep them from splashing about and getting lacquer thinner everywhere.

After you do those steps the last thing to do is to put a bit of straight lacquer thinner in the pot (if there’s none there already) and take the gun to the spray booth. Once there, hook it up to a hose and spray the lacquer thinner at the filters to get it to travel through the gun and clean all the hard to reach spots (which your bristles could never get to).