Solvent Recovery Systems
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Ok I’m just curious on if any of you have used or own your own solvent recovery system for paint thinner/ gun cleaner?
What do they cost? Is there a good and bad unit / brand ?
(I know most of you used waterborne paint)And I guess I just wanted to start a new topic to bring in something New we havent really talked about.
:pcorn:have a uni-ram……….saves lots of money
Do you run a soap and water through a cleaner when spraying water base?
Different topic, but no, we have a Drester 1000 for cleaning wb guns that uses straight water. You can set it up to use fresh or recycled waste water (a powder is added to separate the nasties). We have a uni ram cascade (solvent) for clear guns. On the occasion that we shoot single stage, I`ll use an old siphon JGA and clean it manually before I put it in the solvent gun cleaner.
Recycling thinners sucks. Most thinner you buy now isn’t really a very good grade and once you cook it a time or too you might as well use water. If using a disposable cup system there isn’t enough usage or waste to need one. I think we go through about 45 gallons of thinner a year total for our whole shop, and that is with the bodymen manually cleaning their primer guns. For that much usage it would take years to pay for a recycler.
Since using water I don’t even come close to filling up a 30 gallon drum of solvent waste in a year.
We had one at the heavy truck shop I worked in. But everything we sprayed was solvent, and a lot of it. Cleaning the pressure pots took a lot of solvent, but the automatic gun washer had an attachment for the pressure pot lines.
There, we bought high grade thinner and recycled it. We used the older stuff for pre cleaning dirty trucks (oil field trucks covered in noxious crude).
The solvent recycler was used about once a week (to do about 15 litres). In todays shop, I agree with Ryan, we use such a small amount of solvent that it wouldn’t be worth it, especially in our shop where space is almost non-existant.
We have a Sidewinder. Using PPS and mixing carefully keep wastes to a minimum, so we don’t generate a lot. But the Sidewinder “cooks” about 4 gallon of waste paint in an 8 hour day. You’re left with a bag of solid waste and a can of solvent that’s good for clean rinse at best, but not really worth using to clean guns in my opinion. It is good for use as a quick pre-rinse in a squirt bottle and for cleaning greasy parts. I can recycle Naked Gun cleaning solvent one time with it and have it remain effective, anything more and it loses its pizzazz. If you’re looking at it to cut down your waste paint disposal costs, it’ll take a helluva long time to recoup your investment, but it does work. Mine isn’t a new one, the 1st owner took the hit. :dnc
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