Badger 360 leaking like a sieve! Help!

Tools, Techniques, and Reference Materials Painting and airbrushing
1

After using my Badger 360 for over a year, I had a problem with my brush last night that has me stumped. After adding paint to the gravity-fed paint cup, it started dripping out of the two holes in the airbrush body directly below the cup! Also, the brush won’t draw paint from the siphon cup either. Now, I had just cleaned the brush and replaced the plastic needle bearing, but nothing else that hadn’t been done at least 50 times before.

The needle bearing is visible when you look into the gravity-feed cup, should it be farther forward or more toward the rear?

Any thoughts? Where does the needle bearing go? I inserted it from the front of the airbrush, should it be inserted a different way? Got some airbrushing to do and am a bit frustrated by this.

Stumped in Virginia,

Dennis

2

You need a special tool to insert the needle bearing.

You should have just sent it to Badger and they would do it for you.

3

I would never have guessed it. The bearing came out when I was cleaning it with a pipecleaner! I’ll give Badger a call tomorrow to see what they say.

Thanks!

dt

4

I never run pipe cleaners down the needle tube of an airbrush.

It is not necessary and can cause damage as you found out.

Mike

5

Yep,

Live and learn. I hope this will be a lesson to others out there. In all the information I read about cleaning airbrushes I never found anything about not running a pipecleaner down the needle path. Sure, folks mention using pipecleaners, cotton swabs, etc. but they don’t really go into how to go about cleaning. With my Badger 360 (which should be at Badger by now for servicing), I’ll go this route when cleaning in the future:

  1. empty paint from cup

  2. clean out cup, swab with cotton swab

  3. shoot windex (or thinner) through brush till it comes out clear

  4. loosen needle, remove and wipe

  5. coat needle with lube, return

  6. shoot water through it to get the last remaining bits of paint out.

Thanks for the help, Mike V!

dt