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Posted: Feb 22, 2009 07:29 PM
Glycol DPM Solvent
What solvents do you use to clean your guns, parts and equipment of foam, polyurea and ISO? Several are out there along with radiator coolants. What do you use that works best for you?
Posted: Feb 22, 2009 09:38 PM
Usually on a quick cleanup such as a crossover that just happened, I will use a carbuerator spray along with air from my compressor.

Dynasolve usually works out okay when you soak, which seems to soften up the iso.

When all else fails, I use Radiator fluid, but only once. For whatever reason, once you boil once using the radiator fluid and try to use a second time, everything hardens up and really makes it difficult to clean.

If you boil the first time, everything comes out nice and clean. Just remember, it stays hot for quite a while before you can really handle it. I also found that broken drill bits come out of spray chambers a lot easier once they are boiled clean.

This is probably "Sprayfoam 101" though, if I keep everything greased up good with fusion lube, cleanup is made a lot easier. Usually, I can peel or blow clean any problems.
Posted: Feb 23, 2009 06:06 AM
hey pat,,
we soak any parts with rubber orings in glycol ether
we soak any metal parts without orings in dynasolve
???any tips to the group on removing drill bits???
Posted: Feb 23, 2009 02:17 PM
Foam Dude - got some parts I need you to field try. Call me for a free-be.


I did the radiator boil cleaning. Correct that the parts give true meaning to "hotter than hell". It did OK for cleaning, but the trouble and the fire that started... It just wasn't worth it.

As for removing bits, lots of folk heat them to remove the broken bits. Heating will cook the chemical out and make it easy to remove the bit. SOMETIMES.

We get some sent to us that were heated with a torch. That can also remove the bit. The problem with heating is you are annealing the steal. This ruins the heat treat hard coat. Some heat treats are done in the 400F range. We go to 900 and allow a 24 hour cool down. Our parts after heat treat are a at a Rockwell 50 - then we coat them. When you heat the chamber to red hot, the hardness is shot and surface score marks can be much easier to make and the Rockwell is in the 20 range.

To remove the bit, we will toss them into the heat treat oven and sometimes the bit comes out with air pressure. We also have a hydraulic pump that goes to 30K PSI. We made a steal block for the chamber and the only place for the 30k psi to come out is the main port. We reverse the chamber mount for side ports. This removes some stubborn parts. Bits stuck in the side- your pretty much screwed.

Best way for us to remove any bit is on our EDM machine. It blows out anything. Now its just a matter of time and trouble for set-up. Bottom line is a 50/50 chance to remove it without harming the ports and/or hardness.

We still offer to remove bits, but generally we just sell a new chamber at a reduced price - especially when its one of our own parts. Far more than Graco would do.

BEST way to prevent broken bits. Go to a store that sells cutting torch rigs and welding gas. Tell them you need a TIP CLEANER FOR A CUTTING TORCH. This small, $3.50 kit is 1"x3" box with 15 small metal wires used to clean the ports on the torch and they don't break very as easy. They are abrasive and small enough to go all the way through an AR2929 and some large enough to go into the main port. We clean our and hold them up so we can see light though the side port.

Use them to clean the port, then the bit to remove the foam/poly burgers left inside or blow out with compressed air.

VERY important - these will file the steel. Run them in and out 1 time. If you sit there and jerk it back in the side ports and forth 20+ times you will destroy the fan pattern.

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