Home-brew electrostatic spray painting: very cheap.

I thought for electrostatic spraying you needed about 90 kV or at least the ones I've seen use that sort of voltage.

Sounds a bit lethal, is 10 micro amps going to be enough? why not try to electro-charge the item being sprayed? at least that would get rid of the hand held corona discharge and electrocution effects!!!

Plus your hair will be on end with the rubber boots on.... LOL

John.

Thanks for the input.

OK, now I have done a little more research. A Ransberg electrostatic controller on eBay shows 0-100KV at 0-200uA.

A typical monitor is around 25KV and maybe 2000uA. So I may need to opt for another power supply idea, or find a way of tripling this voltage. But I wonder if the 25KV value is good to work with. Looking at an operator's manual describing the voltage setting instructions may help a lot there, but I was unable to find one on the web.

I never thought of charging the instrument. I would like to hear more from others before I consider that option.

The problem with using acrylic (latex) paint is that it's not ignitable. You need something much more volatile so that when your 90kV lead sparks into the spray head you get a nice flame thrower effect.

Was this the sort of trigger, I've had one for years & they work well.

In referance to your #2 wish of filling crevices: If crevices are corners or interior angled joints, the electrostatic painting is not going to work. In fact, many electrostatic guns have a switch on them that is used to turn off the power when spraying into corners, etc. The reason for this is that the charged paint particles will be attracted to the nearest grounded part of the item you are painting and that will be the sides of the item that forms the corner, not the corner itself.

THANK YOU for this important bit of information!

I did a search on key terms and found it described as the Faraday Cage Effect here.

I may use a foot switch to control the power supply for this reason.

Sounds like you've hit on an interesting idea for the hobbiest and part time fixer-upper. It would be neat if you could come back to CR4 with some photos of the completed unit and perhaps a schematic (for those wishing to build a copy).

As to your idea of multiplying the voltage, it sounds as though you've plenty of current available so why not try a doubler and see what your results are. In fact (if you haven't tried it yet) why not give it a try with the 25 kV.