A lot of us, including my self, have been using a cardboard box as our "spray booth" With the actual booths costing $150+ i thought about how i can get almost the same effect for less than half the cost. Here is my spray booth that i whipped up under $50, it uses some real spray booth air flow patterns, 2 fans, and works pretty good imo.
Some parts of this tut is slightly dangerous. Please take caution when doing this and always double check things. I take no responsiblity in bodily harm and property damage. Now that thats said, its not as bad as it sounds, you will see. Also, in some parts there is a lot of debris produced, so be ready for a clean up and make sure the area is fairly open.
Materials:
- Semi-Large Plasic container, mine is about 25" x 15" x 20" just make sure its big enough to cover you model and other stuff that you are spraying, mine was $5 at walmart
- 2 80 mm case fans. i got 2 for about $10. If you ask nicely you can probably get them for free from the computer department in your school, if not, then a computer hardware store will have em
- mounting screws for the fans, if you buy the fans they should come with, if you didnt then again, the computer hardware store
- 80 mm case fan dust filter, again computer hardware store should have them, and also pick up 4 screws to mount it, shouldnt be more then $5
- computer power supply, i got this from my school, ive seen these as low as $15 in stores. You can get any one, the wattage doesnt matter in our case but just make sure you get an ATX power supply
- a piece of wood thats a bit larger then the bottom face of the power supply, and maybe 1/4 inch in thickness
- 2 inch peice of about 18 - 22 gauge wire
- Epoxy putty
- pencil
- Ruler
- compass
- Dremel and Drill
- A drill bit that is the same size as the 80 mm fan mounting screws
- 7/8" drill bit (ya i know its big)
- dremel sanding tip, the tip that has a sanding stome on it
- 4 screws 1 size thicker then ur larger drill bit, and 1/2 inch long.
- double sided tape.
- masking tape
- hair dryer
- Electrical Tape
- Any low grit sand paper, 100-400
Step 1) First thing you wanna do is check if the container has any holes. As you can see mine has a hole near each handle. They use those holes to let out air when the lid is put on. Take some epoxy putty and put it on the hole from the inside. Spread the putty and fully cover the hole. This will prevent dust from entering. you can let the putty dry now and then go on, or just keep going.
Step 2) Next what you wanna do is decide what kinda of air flow you want. Use this pic.
This pic is from Brians model car website, from the tutorial section, which many of you have contributed too. I picked the downdraft expect iam going to make it so pretty much 100% clean air comes in and flows straight on the model.
Step 3) Ok what you wanna do next is pick, according to the airflow pattern you chose, where you are going to mount the fans. As you can see, iam putting one near the top of the front side and one near the bottom of the back. I chose the 80MM case fans because, they are cheap, light, have pretty good airflow, and are ment for light cooling.
Then what you wanna do next is hold up the fan against the side of the container, where you want to mount the fan, then take your pencil, and trace around the outside of the fan and the little holes for the screws.
Step 4) Take a ruler and draw a line from the middle of any line to the middle of the other parralell line. So you this this.
This gives you the exact centre of the square.
Step 5) Now get your compass ready. As you can see from this following pic:
The the diameter of the actual circle that allows the air to enter, is 71.6 mm. I chose to make it 70 mm, just gives me a easier number to work with. This means that the radius of the circle is 35 mm. Take your compass and measure the radius of the cirle.
Step 6) Measuring from the centre of the square, use your compass and draw a circle.
Step 7) Now repeat steps 3 - 6 for the fan on the other side of the container. Again, make sure u follow the air pattern you chose.
Step 8) This is where it gets a bit messey. Take your drill and the smaller drill bit, and drill out the screw holes. Then using 7/8" drill bit, make a sort of a "flower" pattern while staying inside the airflow hole. see pic:
Now take the dremmel and attach the sanding head. Set your dremmel to about half its max speed and sand out all the "spikey" areas of the flower pattern and try to get a good circular shape, it doesnt have to be perfect.
Do this for both holes. If you have a circle cutter, thats even better, makes it MUCH easier. Now take the sand paper and give the circles you just cut a light sanding. This just makes the circle smoother and removes any particles left on the cut surface.
Step 9) The peice of wood is to help hold power supply up. I didnt wanna just stick the power supply on plastic cuz it probably wouldnt support it. Take the piece of wood and some masking tape and tape it down in the centre of the top. Then take your drill and the drill 4 holes near all 4 corners.
Step 10) Now take the 4 1/2" screwes and screw down the piece of wood. I chose to put the wood in the centre of the top beacuse anywhere else and it will have a tendency to tip. Then take 4 pieces of electical tape and put em on the screws so that the tape is covering the screws. This is to make sure that if your screws are conductive, the visible part of the screw is now non conductive. You will see later on why. This part isnt necessry but my screws looked like they were some kind of copper alloy, and copper is conductive, so i chose to do it. Remove the masking tape.
Step 11) Now take your hairdryer and give the whole container a good blow. This is to get rid of all the dust from the drilling, cutting and so on.
Step 12) Cut 4 pieces of double sided tape thats slightly smaller then the length of the power supply. Then tape the peices on bottom of the power supply, along the edges, leaving about a cm of space on each corner.
Step 13) Now take the power supply and tape it down on the peice of wood.
This is the slighty dangerous part. Please becarefull while doing the following steps, and remember to check to make sure you did it right.
Step 14) Take the piece of wire and strip about 1/2 of a cm on each side.
Step 15) Take the largest connector on the powersupply, the one that has many wires connected to it (also the one that connects to the motherboard), and find the green wire.
See the green wire? Now take the 2inch wire and stick one end into the socket for the green wire and the other end into a socket for any of the black wires. It should look like this.
If you need more help, go here
http://www.virtual-hideout.net/guide...ds/index.shtml
Now tape down the wire with electrical tape so it cant move.
Step 16) Now double check the connection you just made to make sure its right. Plug in the power supply, and turn it on. Check the fan in the back of the power supply, if its spinning then you did it right.
Step 17) Now check the sides of the fans and you will see that one side has 2 arrows. One arrow tells you which way the fan spins and the other tells you the direction of airflow. The arrow that is along the shorter edge is the direction of airflow and the arrow that is along the long edge is the direction of fan rotation.
Step 18) Mount the fan so that the fan in the front (in my case, your case might be different according to what airflow patters you chose) is going to bring in air, so the arrow should be pointing INTO your container. After the front fan is mounted, mount the filter on the fan. The filter is important, this is what keeps all the dust from being sucked in. Here is what it should look like.
The fan at the back is taking out air so the arrow should be pointing OUT of the container. Mount the 2nd fan.
Step 19) Plug the fans into the power supply, and VOILA! You are finished.
You might want to tape some of the wires down on the side of the container so they arent in the way of the fan blades.
Now you have your very own, half decent spray booth under $50. Hope this helps. Thanks, Ron.