Paint handling tools
Comentarii
Michael KohlHaha. Used it during my research. Never thought of using it in modelling. But I always loved the precise handling of volumes it enables. I think that this alone will make handling color mixtures more enjoyable. My internal minister of finance approved it already after I could convince him of the systems amortization in less than 50 years. 😜
Nice input.
Johnamazon.com/Microcent..=B09TT61W2P&th=1
amazon.com/200Pcs-Mi..&sr=1-2&th=1
amazon.com/dp/B09RZR..cF9kZXRhaWw&th=1
amazon.com/Eowpower-..ial%2C252&sr=1-5
amazon.com/EarthOx-S..ial%2C486&sr=1-4
Thanks Michael!
Total investment for above: about $65 👍 You would pay more for 1 decent kit.
It is a lot less messy. No more rinsing and trying to save a dropper or dealing with paint mixes in small cups. No more counting drops to get a color ratio. It's great.
Erik OffEvery day I see them in our laboratories. But I haven't come up with the idea of using such a "pipettor" for model making either. 😄
playtime 222Cracking idea for paint mixes. Just waiting for the knock on the door from the FBI for googling items likely to be used for bio-terrorism 😄
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I've only been here a short time and learned a lot, so I thought I would share some things I have found that make dealing with paint a lot easier.
If you're like me, you hate to waste it, but airbrushing tends to lead to a lot of loss because you can't exactly put what you don't use back in the bottle.
Well, sort of you can, if you have a new "bottle" and best of all, keep custom mixes for a long time.
What you see here are tools I happen to use at work, repurposed to serve the needs of the hobby (obviously the more important). The overview is a setup that would probably cost you between $50-$80 depending on how much of it you want to buy and source. First off is the pipettor (pic 2) which is simply a precise volumetric liquid dispensing device. It's adjustable, calibrated in microliters (100-1000) so you Euros/East/Asia should be comfortable with it and you Yanks will simply get used to it. No matter the units, it's the adjustability and precision that makes it useful. More on that in a bit.
Pic3 is the business end, the pipette tip which friction fits over the pipettor and (here's the good part) disposable. Use it, then simply hit the eject button into the trash and press on a new one. Whether you choose to make ejection seat noises when you do so is entirely up to you.
Pic 4 is the storage tube/"bottle" that kind of ties this all together. It's polypropylene so it shrugs off all solvents you'll encounter in modeling, has a volume of around 1.5-1.7mL and best of all, has a sealable cap that's liquid tight and just clicks shut, no threads.
So why is any of this good? Hopefully you can see some of the benefits already but here's a short list.
1. You can make custom mixes easily. Like I said, units don't matter, it's ratios we're concerned with. Let's say you want to make a hypothetical green that's 4 parts XF61, 1 part XF27 and 2 parts XF62. Easy, you spin the dial to 400, dispense that much into the tube, eject the tip and get a new one, spin it down to 100, same for XF27 and so on for the rest of the paint colors. Mix it up and down with the last paint tip and you're good to go. Want to cut your mix with thinner? Just get a new tube, add thinner to whatever ratio you want, add paint, mix and done. The tubes can easily be labeled with a sharpie on the top and sides with mix info, date, etc. in case you forget what's in it like me.
2. The seal on the tube means you can keep your paint quite a long time. For example, I made a custom yellow color for the wing ID bands on my Raiden. Mixed it in a tube with some Tamiya laquer thinner and it's still good, two years later. I can't say that this will work with all paints or thinners (some enamels have gone sludgy after a few months) but so far with Gunze and Tamiya paints and their thinners, it's all been 👍 Not sure about an alcohol thinner longevity but you should get at least a few weeks out of it since there's no evaporation.
3. It saves paint. Instead of mixing in a disposable container, you're mixing in a sealable tube as noted above and don't have to discard, but you can even cheap out to the maximum degree and use the pipette tip to siphon out what's in your airbrush to put back in the tube so you don't have to dump it and get it all over your airbrush. My paint consumption has gone down drastically with this system. As a bonus, your airbrush is easier to clean once you've pulled the excess paint out. Further with cleaning, you can use the pipettor to add your favorite cleaning solvent and siphon it up and down in the cup to remove stubborn deposits and swirl down in the needle channel. My cleaning solvent use has also gone down as well.
Lastly, the tubes need a rack if you're going to store them, seen in the overview pic but if you don't want to buy one or more, you can always jam them into an old piece of cork or styrofoam. The tips themselves tend to come in bags and though you can manually put them on the pipettor, a rack like seen in the overview is much faster. Not sure they are available separately though they might be, but if you're really interested, I can hook you up.
As mentioned on the price, all of the items are easily available and I believe everyone's favorite globe-spanning retailer carries everything. The nice thing is you can get the cheapest knockoff brands you can find (just make sure it's a "P1000" pipettor) since you're not doing science and a 10 microliter error or whatever is no big deal.
If you're still reading and interested in the system, shoot me a message if you have any questions and happy modeling!
