Air compressor help needed!

[Ben B]

I just cranked up the second hand air compressor my girlfriend recently bought me, for the first time, and can't get it to work properly. If anyone has any experience with air compressors I'd like some help (I understand it's hard to help without actually seeing it!) I was hoping to paint my fences using it.

The compressor gets up to pressure fine, cuts off at the pressure of my choosing, but when the pressure gets low it never comes back on. After much headscratching it turns out there's a trip switch that's popped, that won't allow me to reset it until the power has been off for a while. Any ideas why this would trip every time?
It's a Clarke Rebel air 60 if anyone knows it.

Secondly, my spraygun. This was only about £20 from eBay, it's a HVLP gun, the type with the paint cannister at the bottom ratherthan the top. I just can't get it to pull any paint out, not even just water! Or is water too thin a consistency to work anyway?
I checked everything is tight and there's no blockages, but it's only blowing air through. Even putting my finger over the feed pipe I can't feel any suction. I tried this at all sorts of pressures up to 6 bar, and all the way down to low pressures (as the pressure ran down) hoping that it may start working at low pressures, due to being hv'lp'

Obviously my inexperience doesn't help, but I tried looking at it all logically and I can't get it to work.

Any help appreciated!

 

[^neo^]

Sounds like the switch is knackered on the compressor. Its supposed to cut out when up to pressure, and obviously kick back in when pressure goes below a certain psi, but sounds like its just getting too much pressure and tripping the thermal cut out.

As for the spray gun, loosen the needle screw (back of the gun) so you can fully squeeze the trigger in, and tighten up the air flow screw (the other one) which should pump out loads of paint/water. Then slowly open up the air flow screw until you get a good spray pattern.

 

[Ben B]

Here's a pic of the spraygun I'm struggling with. It's not got as many adjustment knobs as one of the top-fed types I've used in the past. I just can't see what adjustment I can do that will help. The main adjustment knob at the back changes at which point on the trigger the paint comes out (up until that point air only comes through, supposedly) and the little gold bit above that is a kind of filter, that air does tend to come out of when spraying.
Suposedly the spray pattern is adjustable too, but I can't see where.

 

[Ben B]

Paintgun problem fixed! Turns out the tube that goes down to pressureise the cannister was blocked solid! Full of dried locktite or something where it did up. Down to lazy manufacturing I guess.
Paintgun now works beautifully!

The other problem is still there - the compressor tripping out.

That it seems to do is keep pressurising and pressurising until it trips itself out. Not cleverly turning itself off at a desired pressure as I thought it was doing. So it's got a problem with a pressure cutoff switch presumably?

The main reading went as high as about 8 bar before stopping (tripping out). Is it supposed to stop at whatever pressure you set the output dial to? Or does it fill up far more, and just supply you your desired pressure?

 

[^neo^]

It will pump right up to a certain pressure, and the adjuster sends out the pressure you set it to through the air line.
Have a word with the manufacturer about another switch, cant see it being too much.