Multi-colour paints need to be sprayed with equipment that will not break up the individual coloured particles. Modern water based materials are too fragile to spray with high pressure airless equipment, so a low pressure system must be used. The older solvent based fleck paints can be sprayed with an airless system, using a special spray gun available from Lion Industries.
To spray multi-colour, internal mix airspray guns have been used in the past, but they are being superceded by an HVLP system (High Volume Low Pressure), which has the advantage that the spray pattern has a more pronounced feathered edge, that avoids the banding of each spray pass that an internal mix gun can produce, saving extra coating needed to cover the banding. A second advantage of HVLP is that it can be readily used to spray other materials, in particular stains, varnish, primers and gloss.
For spraying multicolour, the paint is usually supplied under low pressure from a pressure tank, inside which the paint can has been placed. The HVLP spray gun can also be fitted with a small 1 litre paint cup for spraying small amounts of paint.
To avoid breaking up the colour fleck particles, a relatively large spray nozzle and needle is required, around 2.8mm in size. To power such a large set up, a 3 or 4 stage HVLP turbine is needed.