Spray guns had been on the scene for a century —then 3M added their perspective
The first use of what we would today call spray painting dates back more than 100 years when the Southern Pacific Railway first employed a “method of painting by spraying with air.”
The tools that today’s auto body shops use to apply paint finishes are descendants of that technology. Even after 100 years, tools are continuing to evolve along with coatings to enable performance that was not previously achievable, and 3M is working to help spray the smarter way. 3M™ Paint Application Solutions products have helped streamline workflows in the bodyshop. The paint booth can be a bottleneck for shops, and 3M has been working to address that with products that enable more efficiency with faster setup, changeovers and clean-up. With better efficiency, painters can spend time where it matters.
Not long ago, paint technicians couldn’t tilt their spray guns much more than 45 degrees—much less upside-down—because the paint would spill from the open cups/vents. With the invention of 3M’s Paint Preparation System (PPS™), the collapsible closed liner system allowed painters to go anywhere their work took them. This value continues with the refinements in the 3M™ PPS™ Series 2.0 Spray Cup System.
Another nuisance in the paint shop—the cleanup process. Before, it took almost as much time to clean a paint gun and its accessories as it did to do a job. Now it takes a fraction of the time and uses mere ounces of cleaning solvent. The 3M™ Performance Spray Gun helps streamline this cleanup process with its easily removeable and cleanable atomizing heads. Additionally, its stainless steel reinforced composite materials make the 3M spray gun weigh about half as much as traditional metal ones, which helps cut down on operator fatigue.
The 3M™ Performance Spray Gun, which debuted in 2020, was developed and tested over several years in the laboratory and bodyshops around the globe. It began by taking many of its cues from the product portfolio of the company’s 2007 acquisition of Accuspray™, which made a spray gun suitable for primer application. Engineers at 3M saw the potential to create a modular product that could handle jobs from priming through topcoat using different materials and nozzle sizes. They filled a whiteboard with ways they could do better, prototyped, and tested these concepts in the field.
One of the most impactful advantages coming from the launch of the 3M™ Performance Spray Gun was its ability to help customers better utilize paint. “Customers began coming back to us about three or four months after launch and saying they were using less paint,” said Corey Munn, 3M Global Segment Director. “They would normally mix 12 ounces to do a job, but now they were seeing three or four left over. That really began to help us understand that we were solving a problem far greater than we realized. Painters and shops started to see that they could get paint to the panel faster with less waste and overspray.”
Several features of the system contribute to this advantage. First, its efficient high-volume/low-pressure (HVLP) design reduces “overspray,” the industry term for paint that ends up in the air or on the wall instead of on the work. This not only improves material efficiency but helps shops comply with updated U.S. Clean Air Act standards.
Users can also use embossed graduations to mix paints directly in the gun’s cup rather than in a separate mixing vessel, so there’s no loss in transfer from one to the other. The cup has a disposable liner and a built-in filter, both of which save paint and cleanup time compared to standard designs. Together with the 3M™ Performance Spray Gun’s built-in high transfer efficiency, there is a notable impact on coating co
nsumption.
The construction of the system is also critical. The 3M design uses interchangeable nozzles which route paint from the cup to the nozzle without any of it entering the body of the spray gun itself. Injection-molding the spray gun body makes it possible to create optimal air passages for HVLP operation. This can help customers operate their spray guns at lower air inlet pressures and reduce the workload on their compressors. This manufacturing method can offer advantages in this regard relative to metal designs that are typically forged or cast and then machined afterward—just as they were a hundred years ago.
The lesson from 3M Paint Application Solutions is that there are always opportunities for improvement. And the design team isn’t done yet. “Paint spray guns will continue to evolve as they have over the past 100 years, and there are exciting technologies that can be incorporated into these tools,” said Ryan Erickson, 3M Product Developer. “We always feel there’s room left to help the customers, and we’re already working on a next generation that will add more benefits and efficiency based on their feedback.”
