According to Ken Schlotfeldt, owner of Badger Airbrush Co, it is for the reasons I mentioned. I don’t see how it allows closer airbrushing anymore than a standard airbrush. I can literally touch the needle tip to the surface with most airbrushes and still paint with them. The crown was designed the way it is so that there is much less surface area of the cap to have paint build up on which affects spray patterns.
There are really no disadvantages to a crown cap as far as I know.
Mike
I vaguely remember reading something in FSM [?] that indicated if you get a full cap too close to the surface, there is not enough area for the air to cleanly escape, creating backdrafts and messing up the paint stream. With the crown, there are always slots through which the air can exit.
This would rank as being is pretty minor disadvantage, but when I have tried to do the blow-back thing while cleaning my Badger 200 NH, which has a very deep crown, I cannot get my fingers to form an adequate seal to force the air back into the color cup or bottle. Since my normal cleaning seems to the job, I’m not losing any sleep over the crown vs. cap.
Andy
I don’t see where that would be true.
As I said already I can literally touch the surface and still get a fine line.
I think that FSM reference was probably just the writters opinion and not necessarily fact.
Mike
Ok Guys the decision has been made.[:D] I just picked up a Iwata HP-C! -with a crown cap. I am going to give it a try on a couple of old kits and see how it handles compared to my old Badger. Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and observations.I will hopefully post my conclusion in a week or two on Iwata vs Badger[:)]
According to an artist friend of mine the crown cap is best used when using a diaphragm compressor as the crown tends to act as a air diffuser( apparently to decrease the pulsation effect of some compressors) at the tip making a smoother and more consistant pass, and reduce paint build-up as Mike V stated. Beats me.
All I know now is that I probably should start looking for a new piston type compressor if I truly want to be an ARTIST![;)][:-,][(-D] But I think I will worry about my airbrush technique First!
Scott
So many things that are written actually boil down to opinion and experience rather than objective fact. Since my personal experience along these lines is with my crowned 200, thus lacking any comparitive experience, I actually don’t have a significant opinion one way or the other.
At any rate, I did dig through my FSM archives and found the information to which I was referring in a sidebar “Anatomy of an airbrush” from the article “Airbrush aerodynamics” By Robert Oehler, March 2001. Re-reading the sidebar, I think my summary of his discussion point on crowns vs. caps was reasonably accurate, albeit a bit superficial. He did talk about paint build-up, but he indicated that disrupted airflow would cause paint to build up no the needle.
Fact or opinion? Who knows, and without a wind tunnel (it would be hard to accurately model that situation in a wind tunnel) probably any statement about it falls into some form of opinion.
Andy