Respirator question

danimal518

New Member
Joined
Nov 9, 2012
Messages
80
Hello gentle people,

I just wanted to know what type of respirators everyone on here is using?

I'm looking to buy one, but I'm not sure what i should be looking for. I airbrush using Tamiya and testors acrylics, some Vallejo. I use lacquer thinner to clean my AB. I'm also going to start soldering. I know I'll need a particulate mask, but will i need something for the vapors?

Thanks in advance guys!
 
For any solvent like lacquer thinner, or even the glycol ether which Tamiya's acrylics are based in, you need an OV cartridge, aka Organic Vapor. All decent respirator brands will offer an OV cartridge (in addition to a myriad other).

As for masks, I really recommend the 3M 7500. It used to only be available at industrial supply stores but its showing up everywhere from amazon to walmart now. Being a "pro" model its meant to be warn for an entire shift. What that means for our purpose is they are SUPER comfortable. Although it doesn't look it, once I have mine on I literally forget I'm wearing it.

Last you forever.

The proverbial OV cartridge set is 6001. There is also an N95 particulate you can clip over the 6001 to filter out the paint "dust" which is in the air. Cant recall the PN off top my head. Edit: the N95 which fits over the OV cartridge is 5N11 (use with retainer 501). Better still is 60921 which is an OV with P100 particulate.

I dont use solvent based paint so I'm mainly concerned with filtering the actual over-spray (which in the case of water based acrylic amounts to paint "dust") so I use a P100 pancake filter on mine. 2091 is as good a particulate as you can get (maybe even overkill for water based acrylics), but I use the 2097 which adds "nuisance level" OV filtering because I do use an ether based airbrush cleaner which I do not want to inhale (but that would not be good enough for something like lacquer thinner, or even ether based paints like Tamiya so you'll want the full OV unit plus particulate).

What I don't know about is the soldering question. The P100s list "Soldering" as an application but I thought there were some fumes involved. A quick phone call to 3M should sort you out as they are very helpful in figuring out which filter you need for a given task.
 

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