Airbrush Hobby Booth

I wasn’t happy with the airbrush booths on the market, so I decided to make my own. What I wanted was a multipurpose ventilated work booth where I can both build models or solder without worry of fumes, while being able to quickly switch over to the admittedly occasional acrylic paint airbrushing for priming and base coating. While I think this booth could be capable of exhausting lacquer based paints, no amount of PPE would make me feel comfortable doing so indoors. 

These were my design requirements:

• Relatively quiet motor with speed control, high static pressure, and high CFM

• 24” wide workbox size

• Integrated light system with brightness and color temperature control

• Easily removable side walls

What I don’t care about:

• Portability or ability to take down, the market already has good options here but they compromise the above primary goals.

• Perfect light color accuracy (I’m not talented enough to care)

This is actually the second airbrush booth I built, learning from my first attempt that I wanted easily removable side walls as a design requirement. I found that the booth side walls kinda make you feel like operating in a white room and block your view/access to the rest of the desk, while only being useful whilst airbrushing.

Here’s the BOM (Bill of materials):

• AC infinity Cloudline S6 motor with 8’ duct kit

• 12’ worth of 1x2 poplar

• 3x 3’ long 3/4” square dowel

• 1/4” wood dowels

• wood glue

• #8 x 3/4" wood screws

• Hot glue (to insulate bare sections after soldering)

• Solder & solder remover

• Super glue

• 3x10mm magnets

• 3d printing filament

• Clipboard clip harvested from clipboard (any clip could work)

These are the tools I used:

• chop saw

• cordless drill

• brad point drill bits (1/16” and 1/4")

• 3/4” Forstner bit

• Chamfer bit

• 12” F clamp

• FDM printer

• Soldering iron

• Hot glue gun

First up is motor selection:

A lot of first ideas folks have in motor selection is to use something like a PC fan, but those do not typically have enough static pressure for this application. The other is bathroom exhaust fans, but those are too loud and lack fine speed control. The best option I found is the Cloudline series from a company called AC Infinity. I went with the CLOUDLINE PRO S6.

Their market is for those seeking HVAC options for growing their “herbs” indoors, and they have the same requirements for an airbrush booth extraction, high static pressure, high CFM, speed control, and relatively low noise. While I found their tech specs disingenuous by quoting the noise at the lowest fan speed, and the static pressure and CFM at the highest speed (show me the fan speed curve you cowards), I was still quite pleased with the performance compared to competing products. I find of the 8 speeds, speed 3-4 is plenty of suction where I cannot smell the plastic glue whatsoever while keeping around 40-45db, which is quiet enough for me to not be bothersome. Most importantly, the tone is on the more pleasant side, not too high pitched or whiny.

The motor and the 8’ duct kit contains everything needed to get started.

Here’s how my booth design works:

The design starts around wood side frames to provide strength without the side walls to tie the structure together. 3 acrylic panels form the bottom back and top, screwed to the side frames. A 3D printed duct mates to the back to duct between the filter and the motor ducting. Wood cross beams on the inside of the back offer alignment for the standard 20x12 furnace filter. On the inside of the top, wood cross beams provide rigidity to the top and mounting for the LED strip lights. 2 clear acrylic panels with magnets attached and some gasket make up the quick connect side walls for airbrushing. Adorning the booth are a variety of 3d printed tool holders, paint rack, paint handle holding magnets, clip board clip for holding up instructions, and a retention strip to keep the fan filter from falling down.

I strived my best to try and make the booth simple to make, and it was through my lens, but you can be the judge of how well I did.

The frame wood working is fairly rudimentary, the only power tools used being a chopsaw for cutting the sections to length from lumber from the home goods store, and a drill for the joinery. This is usually where a woodworking youtuber would say, you could totally use a handsaw to do this! BS. I didn’t, I wouldn’t, and while you technically could, I would never recommend that to a beginner.

The acrylic panels are laser cut via sendcutsend. The bottom and the back are both 24”x18”, and the top is 24”x12”, all sizes off the shelf, and the angle for the sides is 80 degrees. One could alternatively consider making them out of ¼” plywood, but I quite prefer the smoothness of the acrylic panels.

The 3d printed duct is split into 4 pieces to better fit on fdm printers. To be honest, the duct is quite overkill. A cardboard box with a hole cut in it taped to the back and a cheap duct connector flange would perform just fine I imagine. This is more a because I could I did.

Similarly, the soldering for the LED lighting is on the easier side as far as soldering goes, but you could cut it out by just buying an off the shelf under cabinet light and mounting it in its place.

Here’s some cheaper/easier alternatives I considered:

If you aren’t interested in building your own booth you could try retrofitting this motor to an existing booth, or even just fashion something simple from cardboard and a furnace filter to get started. Here are some DIY examples I found in my research that don’t require power tools.

Cardboard – (I’m willing to bet with some clever cardboard folding you could recreate my design concept, but I’m leaving it to the reader) https://www.instructables.com/DIY-Cardboard-Spray-Booth/

Translucent coroplast – (I think this stuff can cut ok with a utility knife? https://www.reddit.com/r/airbrush/comments/u3w80j/finally_built_myself_a_spray_booth/

Retrofitted tote bin – (a bit more ergonomically awkward, but easily the stiffest and easiest option). https://makezine.com/article/workshop/build-an-easy-and-cheap-tabletop-spray-booth/

If I were to take this route, I would get one of the big clear totes like this one from home depot, cut a rectangular hole in the bottom slightly smaller than the 12x20x1 furnace filter, tape the filter to the bottom, tape an appropriately sized cardboard box to the back, cut a 6” hole in that, add the 6” duct connector to that hole, then connect to the motor duct kit from there. It’s not elegant, but its by far the cheapest and easiest approach that will still produce excellent ventilation, and you could always upgrade from there down the road.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-27-Gal-Tough-Storage-Tote-in-Clear-with-Yellow-Lid-999-27G-C-HDX/328026917

https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-12-in-x-20-in-x-1-in-Standard-Pleated-Air-Filter-FPR-5-MERV-8-HDX1P5-011220/314671388

Here’s a link to the 6” flanged duct connector I mentioned if not taking the 3D printed duct route (finding the right keywords to feed google for this was more difficult than I expected).

https://www.amazon.com/Hon-Guan-Connector-Straight-Ventilation/dp/B07MNYLLTL?th=1

While I have aspirations to write up proper instructions on how to make it, it’s a lot of work, and admittedly I’d like to get back to hobbying, so I guess if enough people bully me into it I’ll consider it. Regardless, I’ve uploaded all the 3D files for the design here on printables if you want to give it a go. File is a step assembly file of all the individual bodies so you can export out however you like. Cheers.