Digital Prints

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Mastering Digital Printing
Spraying Safety
The biggest concern with spray coatings are the health and environmental hazards involved.
What can you do to be safer? Follow these safety tips:
■ Because spraying produces airborne contaminants, get a good face mask like the ones professional
autobody painters use.
■ Wear your face mask whenever spraying, mixing, or handling coating or painting materials.
■ Always wear safety approved goggles or glasses when spraying. Try to cover your hands and other areas
of exposed skin.
■ Never spray near open flames or pilot lights in stoves or heaters.
■ Ventilation requirements (indoors): (1) only work in a well-ventilated area, (2) run ventilation continuously,
and (3) continue ventilation for at least one hour after spraying is completed. The best sort
of ventilation is a hood type with direct exhaust (through a filter) to the outside.
Two spraying operations: (left) photographer, professor, and author Stan Shire sprays with an HVLP sprayer in his basement shop next to an open sliding door,
which pulls most of the material out. “In the winter, I wear a sweater,” he says. His mask is a standard 3M organic vapor respirator. At right is printmaker Steve
Carlisle using the same type of HVLP sprayer that’s used for painting cars. That’s a silkscreen sink with built-in ventilation from behind. He also has codeapproved
top ventilation, and he keeps a door open. His full-face mask is also from 3M.
Courtesy of Stan Shire/Community College of Philadelphia (left); Steve Carlisle/Thunderbird Editions
Two other options for those who don’t want to mess around with proper ventilation and/or
face masks are “spray-for-pay” and using a liquid coating machine. Spray-for-pay means
finding someone else to do it for you. It may be hard to locate an individual or a shop who
will take in your prints for coating without having done the printing, but it may be worth
the effort to find them.
Liquid coating machines for photographer-artists are relatively new on the scene, and permanence
researcher Bill Waterson has developed a working prototype that was undergoing
field testing at the time of this writing (see Figure 9.4). You pour the coating solution