No Name Red Aluminum Airbrush

4/2018

I told myself I was finished doing reviews. I was burned out and they just weren't as much fun as they used to be. But recently while browsing Ebay I spotted these bright red and gold colored aluminum airbrushes. They were cheap, and I couldn't resist. So I bought a red one for just $11.89 including shipping from China. Seventeen days later here's what showed up.

The red parts are anodized aluminum..The silver ones are probably chrome plated brass. It was in a plain white cardboard box. You don't get a fancy case with an airbrush that's less than $12. Here is the one sheet document that came with it.

There is no manufacturer's name anywhere. Here it is next to a Neo which looks similar.

Because of the aluminum body, it weighs just 49 grams, much less than the Neo's 89 grams . Like the Neo, the cup unscrews. It has the same 1/8 inch air hose connection as the Neo and several other brands. Fit and finish are very nice. Here it is disassembled. I used pointy tweezers to unscrew the retainer of the air valve.

How they can make this and make a profit at such a low price is beyond me. There is a little grease on the threads of the trigger limiter and on the air valve core. There are six O-rings, the five you can see and one inside the body above the air valve. I had to use a pair of pliers on the head, but everything else came apart and went back together easily. Here's the nozzle close up.

It's a small 0.3mm. Like the Neo, it has an O-ring that recesses into the body of the brush when it is installed. Here is the tip of the needle. It really looks delicate. The shaft of the needle is 0.045 inches, just slightly less than the 0.046 of the Neo.

Here is the needle seal. It appears to be teflon. It installs easily, but adjustment is touchy just like most other airbrushes.

Here's what the trigger looks like. The ridges make for a good grip. It pulls back nice and smooth. There is a slight catch when pressing it, but not bad. Tensions are more than I like, but that's normal. I will tweak the springs.

The cup and cap are nicely finished inside and out. The lid is a good fit, easy on but won't fall off. The cup is spec'd at 7 ml or a little less than 1/4 oz. That's smaller than the larger 1/3 oz cup of the Neo. The Neo also comes with a 1/16 oz cup.

There is no O-ring seal on the bottom. Hopefully it won't leak.

The opening in the body is tiny. Cleaning will pretty much have to rely on flushing with solvent.

Trying it out

I connected it to my compressor, set the pressure to about 25psi and put some water in the cup. When I pressed the trigger, there were bubbles in the cup. I did some investigation and found the same problem I had with my Master G-22. Here is a photo of the front of the head.

Notice the tip of the nozzle sits lower than the opening in the spray regulator. So, instead of a vacuum, it sees a positive pressure which forces air back into the cup. So, I did the same thing I did to the G-22 and removed the O-ring behind the head. This causes the head to sit back farther. The O-ring isn't really necessary anyway. The air leak is minor. Here is the result.

Now the nozzle protrudes a little and the bubbling stopped. But, still no spray. Notice how offset the nozzle is in the opening in the spray regulator. A temporary fix for that was to put a paper shim under the edge of the head. Here is what it looked like after that.

Would you believe it still wouldn't spray? I did some more checking and I discovered that the needle was slipping in the needle chuck. Pulling back on the trigger wasn't doing anything. The solution was to really muscle the chuck tighter. I found that I need to tug on the needle after I install it to make sure the chuck is tight enough. Possibly the needle shaft diameter is a little undersized. I suspect it should really be 0.046 inches like the Neo needle. So, now it sprays as long as I put the shim in. Without the shim, it still wouldn't spray. Here is what I think is actually the cause of the offset problem.

The long brass piece joins the nozzle to the body. I don't know if it is a press fit or threaded, but I suspect it is not quite true. It wouldn't take much error to cause the offset I'm seeing. I tried removing the O-ring from the nozzle to see if that would help, but it didn't. The shim is a clumsy fix, but it works. I could try bending the brass piece, but that's risky. For now I'll stick with the paper shim.

I cut a couple turns off each spring to get a nice light feel. If you do this it works smoother if the cut end of the back spring faces the front of the brush and the cut end of the air valve spring faces down.

I did this with food coloring on a paper towel at about 20 psi.

I removed the front guard and used the needle limiter. The limiter adjust is nice and smooth. It's not the finest line I've seen with a nozzle this small, but it's not bad. I should note that I'm a little rusty and that might have some effect on the result. Maximum spray width is about 3/8 of an inch.

I cleaned it by flushing water in and out of the cup outlet with an eyedropper and spraying until the water was clear. The cup joint didn't leak while I was spraying, but when I unscrewed it there was food color on the threads. I think the cup has to be removed for cleaning. The needle had some color on it too and needs to be wiped.

One thing I noticed while using this airbrush was that I was very aware of the weight of the air hose. It's so light that the hose feels heavy. With my other airbrushes I don't notice the hose at all. The skinny vinyl type hose might be a good match for it.

Spare Parts ?

Does it make any sense to buy spare parts for a $12 airbrush? Actually, I found that the nozzle and needle of my Master G-22 look the same and fit fine. But, for about the same price for them, you could just buy another airbrush. The spray regulators are not the same, so you would have to stick with the 0.3 to 0.35mm size parts.

Conclusion

The Good: It's nicely finished, looks and feels good, and it's very light weight. Sprays fine now.

The Bad: It didn't spray without some rework.

The alignment of the nozzle is the most critical part of an airbrush, and this is where the Chinese airbrushes seem to have a problem. If you are lucky, or are able to figure out a work-around, it's a decent airbrush. I seem to have a knack for getting the bad apple in the barrel. I found a YouTube video review of this brush and it worked fine for him.

I don't like screw-on cups. The access is never as good for cleaning as the permanent type. This one is particularly bad for that. And to get even reasonable cleaning you are going to have to remove the cup each time. But, I can see why they did it. You can't braze aluminum as easily as brass, and it would be more difficult to join the cup and body. So, they went with a brass go-between. Still, it seems like they could have made cleaning access better.

The tiny nozzle and fine needle are very fragile. It's not a big deal for an experienced airbrusher, but I would not recommend this airbrush for a first time user.

I enjoyed doing this review, and I hope you enjoyed reading it. But, I really think this is my final one. I sure don't need any more airbrushes.

Postscript

I decided to see if I could do something about the nozzle centering. Instead of trying to bend the brass piece, I very carefully filed the front surface of the body so that when the head is tightened, the nozzle is centered. It actually worked really well. The aluminum is very easy to file, and it didn't take very much to correct the alignment. So, now I can toss the paper shim.

Here is a video by an airbrush artist comparing this airbrush to an Iwata Eclipse.

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