Armory turned cool community center

By Jack Innis
Featured in the December 2010 Spray Foam Magazine

O’Neill Hall, former National Guard Massachusetts Militia Volunteers Armory, was transformed into the Fitchburg Senior Center. City planners soon found that the heating system was not able to adequately heat the center during winter activities.

Since this is a historical building, this project also had additional considerations such as providing a solution to meet the requirements of the architect and the Massachusetts Historical Commisssion. Click on the link below to find out how FoamRun, an SPF contractor, was able to apply spray foam using a Graco Fusion® Air Purge spray gun and Graco Reactor® E-30 proportioners.

Armory Turned Cool Community Center

Coming Soon: New proportioner packages

New Reactor proportioner packages with Graco^® Fusion^® CS, Fusion^® AP or Probler^® P2 guns will be available in the near future. Distributors: watch for an official Graco product bulletin in early July giving exact availability and pricing information.

The part numbers for the new packages are included in the table below:

P2 Gun Upgrade

All P2 guns (including P2, P2 Elite and P2 Auto Guns) have been upgraded to include a piston lock. The piston lock will look and work the same as the piston lock on Graco Fusion® AP guns. New P2 guns will no longer include the trigger guard.

The piston lock assembly can be added to existing P2 guns.
258761 Piston Lock Assembly

A piston lock repair kit has also been created.
258762 Piston Lock Repair Kit

For more information on the P2 Gun, visit www.graco.com

ClearShot - Polyurea Test

Recently, Spray Pump, Inc., of Baytown, Texas, needed to spray polyurea on the walls (wood) of temporary buildings at a correctional facility. The challenge was to create a fail-safe barrier or seal that would prevent screws from being removed from the walls. Why? So inmates could not remove the screws and either create holes for escape or use the screws as weapons.

Willie Herrington, at Spray Pump, Inc., was asked to conduct field tests to find an application that would speed up the process. The material Herrington used was the Bearcat Industries SL-400 Polyurea. Before the field test, Herrington was using the Graco^® Reactor^® E-10 with a 2K Ultralite Gun. The application was good but extremely slow.

In Test #1, Herrington used the Graco Fusion Air Purge gun and the E-10 heated proportioner.

Herrington used the E-10 proportioner with heat and tried several different configurations of the Fusion Air Purge gun. Application productivity was greatly increased in this test.

Results: Herrington found that the Fusion AP had too much flow for the given application. Using the GX-8 gun would be too cost prohibitive; i.e., selling it with an an E-10 package. A suggestion was made to try Graco's new Fusion CS.

For Test #2, Herrington picked up the Graco Fusion CS with a round mix chamber and used a E-10 heated proportioner. Fluid temperatures were set at 125F for the A and 130F for the B. Spraying pressure was 1700-1800 psi.

Results: Herrington tested the gun using the variable flow setting, reducing the flow to the desired rate. This was a great improvement over the Fusion AP, but there was a problem: one side of the pattern had a much higher millimeter build than the other - a condition unacceptable to the end user. The test results were better than those of the Fusion AP, but not quite to what was needed.

Test #3 was similar to Test#2, but Herrington used a Graco Fusion CS with a flat mix chamber and a flat tip (FT0424 tip). Again, he used an E-10 heated proportioner and A and B temperatures of 125F and 130F, respectively. His spraying pressure was 1850 psi.

Results: Using a flat mix chamber solved the inconsistent pattern problem that the round chamber produced. Bearcat Industries found the production and quality of finish to be acceptable. Herrington commented, "The spray test was performed and the results were beyond my expectations. We were able to maintain 1850 psi and the product sprayed like an automotive finish. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, it would have been hard to believe.”

As a result of this test, the Fusion CS earned its credibility in the coatings market. It may present a lower-cost alternative to the GX-8 gun for low-output polyurea applications.