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Ok so along side RaptorHeli2's Synergy canopy im painting a raptor 90 canopy for 3dee,
Heres the blog for his.
Start 9am,
Masked out the carbon fibre screen using 1inch masking tape but left the edge of the carbon visible. I then took 3M Fine Lining Tape and went around the edge of the screen making sure the fibre was covered without touching the canopy its self.
This canopy came gel coated which meant i only had to key this surface before painting base-coat on , no need for primers ! (usually canopies come gel coated which means you can grey scotch the gelcoat being carefull not to break through it and paint directly on-top of the surface, If not make sure you use a PLASTIC primer prior to basecoat, Sikkens do a very nice wet-on-wet primer )
Once the area was key'd for basecoat i then ran the canopy through the light tunnel to find any imperfections , to my delight there wasn't any,
I ran some tape all around the bottom edge of the canopy to protect the surface i wanted to paint while i painted the inside of the canopy with a simple 2k lacquer, this will protect the inside surface from any fuel that may be sprayed inside of it. I allowed this to dry with an infra-red lamp aiding the process. Once dry i hung the canopy ready for base-coating.
i had decided that to offer more protection i was going to put on each base with it's own layer of lacquer.
I started with the Sun-Burst Yellow base-coat 2 nice coats all over, i allowed this to dry off (water based base-coats generally only take 10-15mins to go touch dry ) once dry i gave the yellow 2 coats of lacquer. And set the oven to bake.
Once TOTALLY DRY , (check by touching the tape on the screen NOT the canopy surface ) i took the canopy downand once i was happy with the finish i used a Trizact disk to key the surface again ready for the orange basecoat.
Now the canopy is keyed again (it will appear dull again and have NO gloss level) and is hung in the over ready for painting, use a mild panel wipe to clean the surface, now you can start to brush the orange into the bottom of the canopy now for this i generally turn the fluid right up and reduce the pressure to 0.7 bar on my airbrush, this makes over-spray minimal, I slowly brush the orange into the desired area SEMI-WET then apply a nice wet coat over that, NOW heres the added bonus of lacquering prior to orange, you can take a cloth and dampen it with panel wipe and gently remove any orange overspray not wanted, once this is done i let the orange cure and then lacquered over the WHOLE surface again.
Below are pictures of the canopy so far but there is a red flashing to be added to the side and the owners name to be added to the top of both sides of the canopy.
Will post more pictures as it progresses
Heres the blog for his.
Start 9am,
Masked out the carbon fibre screen using 1inch masking tape but left the edge of the carbon visible. I then took 3M Fine Lining Tape and went around the edge of the screen making sure the fibre was covered without touching the canopy its self.
This canopy came gel coated which meant i only had to key this surface before painting base-coat on , no need for primers ! (usually canopies come gel coated which means you can grey scotch the gelcoat being carefull not to break through it and paint directly on-top of the surface, If not make sure you use a PLASTIC primer prior to basecoat, Sikkens do a very nice wet-on-wet primer )
Once the area was key'd for basecoat i then ran the canopy through the light tunnel to find any imperfections , to my delight there wasn't any,
I ran some tape all around the bottom edge of the canopy to protect the surface i wanted to paint while i painted the inside of the canopy with a simple 2k lacquer, this will protect the inside surface from any fuel that may be sprayed inside of it. I allowed this to dry with an infra-red lamp aiding the process. Once dry i hung the canopy ready for base-coating.
i had decided that to offer more protection i was going to put on each base with it's own layer of lacquer.
I started with the Sun-Burst Yellow base-coat 2 nice coats all over, i allowed this to dry off (water based base-coats generally only take 10-15mins to go touch dry ) once dry i gave the yellow 2 coats of lacquer. And set the oven to bake.
Once TOTALLY DRY , (check by touching the tape on the screen NOT the canopy surface ) i took the canopy downand once i was happy with the finish i used a Trizact disk to key the surface again ready for the orange basecoat.
Now the canopy is keyed again (it will appear dull again and have NO gloss level) and is hung in the over ready for painting, use a mild panel wipe to clean the surface, now you can start to brush the orange into the bottom of the canopy now for this i generally turn the fluid right up and reduce the pressure to 0.7 bar on my airbrush, this makes over-spray minimal, I slowly brush the orange into the desired area SEMI-WET then apply a nice wet coat over that, NOW heres the added bonus of lacquering prior to orange, you can take a cloth and dampen it with panel wipe and gently remove any orange overspray not wanted, once this is done i let the orange cure and then lacquered over the WHOLE surface again.
Below are pictures of the canopy so far but there is a red flashing to be added to the side and the owners name to be added to the top of both sides of the canopy.
Will post more pictures as it progresses
....hope you get it going again soon! 
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