Spray paint booths are one of the greatest innovations made in modern manufacturing. These are designed to accommodate any manufactured item, from the smallest parts to the largest machines for painting. They are, however, generally used in everyday applications for automotive painting.
The air flow pattern, finish, and size of the paint booth are among the key considerations when buying a spray paint booth. Though essential, a lot of people pay little attention to the lighting of the spraybooths they find for sale when evaluating which suits their application. The lighting of your spray booth is a crucial determinant in the quality of your vehicle painting job and the safety of your booth.
The following are among the lighting options you have for spray booths:
LED Lights
These are the standard for automotive spray booth lighting. They are a safe option for the ignitable fumes found in the booth’s environment and will reduce your venture’s energy expense by at least 75%.
LED lights are the closest ones to natural lighting with a color rendering index (CRI) of 80-100. The CRI index ranges from 0-100 and denotes a light’s quality. Lights with a scale close to 100 matches a natural light color. Though costly, LED lights have a long lifespan, which makes them worth their price.
Fluorescent Lights
These are the common lights used in spray paint booths. Fluorescent lights have high efficiency, long lifespan, and reduced energy expenses. The primary difference between LED and fluorescent lighting for spray booths lies in their directional feature.
Fluorescent lighting only offers 360-degree lighting, unlike LED lights which can be used for the illumination of a specific booth area. Fluorescent lights are best arranged horizontally for the optimal lighting of your paint booth or mounted to the upper corners of your booth.
Incandescent Lights
These will suffice for a few types of spray booths. Incandescent lights have a reduced light quality, but a CRI of 100. The high CRI score comes from their ability to reproduce the colors on their spectrum — such as yellow, orange, and red — exceptionally well. The lights might suffice for spray booths dealing with these three colors.
Explosion-Proof Lights
These are also called hazard location lights and are compliant with the set Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards for applications exposed to pulverized dust and flammable petrochemical vapors.
The use of explosion-proof lights in your spray booth can significantly reduce the risk of fires. Though available as purely explosion-proof light bulbs, a few manufacturers have LED, fluorescent, and incandescent lights in explosion-proof variants.
The above lights are only some of the lights available for spraybooths. There are different state and local requirements on what should be included in a spray booth (for its safety), so be sure to do your research. The ventilation, location, heating, and fire extinguisher are some of the common elements in most states. You should first check the local regulations in the place you want to install the spray booth before making a choice. Moreover, there are OSHA regulations your spray booth will also need to comply with.
