Hi guys! I’ve always wanted to buy myself a spray booth for airbrushing activities, but premade ones are so expensive and I’ve been informed that they actually don’t do the job well and break easily as oppose to making your own spray booth. So I decided to make a cheap one(but actually performs better than premade ones) myself! And here’s my prototype, it’s a bit crudely made but I’m genuinely surprised it actually works pretty good!

Materials used:

1. Big old box big enough to fit your choice of ceiling ventilation fan. (Yes, a ceiling ventilation fan is the heart of this project)

2. Trusty duct tape that can almost hold anything.

3. Ceiling ventilation fan that has enough air suction power (usually indicated in m^3/hr or ft^3/min). What I bought was an Akari ceiling ventilation fan model AEF-8C that has 70 ft^3/min of air ventilation for only Php 1,000.00 at True Value. There’s a more powerful one that is rated 88 ft^3/min but its more expensive, and I saw a smaller one that was rated 100 m^3/hr and was only priced Php 750.00 but I wasn’t sure if it was enough for the job though.

4. Flexible aluminum tubing for the ventilation exhaust. (it goes outside the windows). This one costed me Php 1254.00 at True Value, it’s more expensive than the fan itself! But I’m surprised with its durability albeit its made of aluminum, It tried tearing the aluminum material by hand but you can’t tear it with your hands apparently, not like the ones we use for food.

5. Velcro Sticky Strips (optional, just to hold the front covers of the box when not in use)

And here it is! This is the front side of the spray booth while its closed.

I put some Velcro Sticky Strips on the front so that the front side of the spray booth can be closed when not in use.

And when you open the booth, here’s what it looks like inside. As you can see I have already tested my booth out and it works pretty well, it sucks the particles and fumes effectively. Still I would recommend wearing an air filter mask with the right filter for paint while spray painting for extra health safety. What I have observed after a painting session was that a lot of paint particles would settle on the cardboard surface, it can be easily cleaned using a small vacuum cleaner, I plan to put some felt paper on the cardboard surface so that it would hold the paint particles like a carpet and just vacuum it afterwards so as not to accumulate to much paint dust on my booth.

The ceiling ventilation fan has a focused cylindrical outlet for the air it ventilates. A flexible aluminum tubing can be attached to the outlet so that it’ll carry the harmful fumes wherever the end of the tubing goes into. Of course you should put the end of the tube somewhere outside (window), not back inside the room or it would be of no use! XD

I just cut a hole on the side of the box where the aluminum tubing will go through and covered some open spaces with some spare cardboard pieces and some duct tape.

And this is the end of the aluminum tubing, this goes outside the window and it’s 10 meters long (pretty long actually since the distance of the booth to the windows is only minimal)

And that’s it! It is very simple to construct but it works perfectly! I have enough space to paint inside and it ventilates the paint particles properly. And the total cost of the project is just Php 2254.00 compared to an Php 8000.00 premade Tamiya branded ones. It’s a great project and investment for those who want to pursue airbrushing their model kits indoors. This is the start of many custom painted kits! (I hope!). When the time comes, I will be improving this custom made DIY spray booth and add some useful features, if I ever thought of some. Thanks for viewing~!