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Powder paint fluid beds not working.

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There are tons of different materials to use as fluid bed membranes.

Tyvek from the post office envelope works well for lots of paints. Just make sure you have the correct side up.

Brown paper bag material of different thicknesses can work.

Different weights of copy paper can work.

Vacuum cleaner bag material can work. Again just make sure you have the correct side facing up.

I find with a lot of my paints I have to stir them up first is sometimes they will settle and cake up a little bit.

And some of them just never want to flow properly due to the heavy pigments in them.

I actually built a vibratory fluid bed base for my problem paints and it does help quite a bit with some of them.

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On 3/17/2022 at 10:06 AM, azsouth said:

There are a lot of different reasons why fluid beds don't work. Here are a couple.

1. Moisture in the powder. 

2. Powder is compacted, just use something to stir it and add air.

3. Lack of air flow.

azsouth just gave a bunch to watch... and are usually the main culprits.  If you are using fresh, new powder and still having issues.... then yes you'd have to start messing with your fluidbed. 

I use coffee filters for my "membrane" - seems to work well and is cheap as can be - you can double up if necessary to get the right amount of penetration - or even perforate the second (outer) layer in areas you'd want to "focus" the air a little more.

I recently had exact same issues... first was old powder - it was "fluffy" to my eye, but when I got a fresh bag of it I noticed that it what I had was more sugar grain like instead of talcum powder like... made a huge difference.

I also added "vibration" to my little 1 cup setup.  Bought some vibrating motors off amazon for an X-Box controller.  connected (2 AA) batteries and mounted the motor.  Seems to shake the powder just enough to help keep it flowing.  I'd probably get a bigger motor if I did it again to really shake it good, but it definitely helps to vibrate.  From what I can tell it doesn't allow the "tunnels/chimneys" of air to form - as once hey do the shake/vibration collapses it.

J. 

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Go to TJ'S tackles website, get their phone number and call them, they sell precut discs of fluidizing membrane. You have to call because it's not on the website. It's actually designed for the job and is leaps and bounds superior to any home brew "solution". Try it and you'll thank me.

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Not to take anything away from TJ, but I bought the fluid discs from him and they did not work with my powder. With that said, all powder will not work in all media. I have seven dedicated powder cup colors. Out of the seven 3 of them have Tyvek media, 3 of them have vacuum cleaner bags and 1 has a brown bag. So this tells me and I have been doing this for along time, that all powder pigments are not created equal. I found this to be true with not only my powder but CSI (Pro-tec) powder as well.

On another note, vibratory movement as mentioned above is the key to a lot of problems. Since you are using an air source, let your air pump touch your  fluid bed, the vibrations may help. Also you can build a small stand on your fluid bed that can sit on top of your air pump which will vibrate as well. A little ingenuity will solve many of your problems. Good luck.

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12 minutes ago, m.t.pockets said:

what is the correct side? Writing to the inside of cup or facing down to the work bench

Doesn't make a difference as far as I'm concerned. However do not cut the circle with the seam in it. Make sure your cutout circle is all one piece..

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On 10/13/2022 at 7:01 PM, Kasilofchrisn said:

the red lettering from the envelope should be facing down.

They are designed to let moisture out but not in so that would give you the best air flow.

That's good to know. I didn't know there was a difference. Thanks for the info.:yay:

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