In finishing you can feed material into a spray gun via gravity, suction, or pressure. Each method of material delivery has various benefits and drawbacks, in this post we will cover those benefits and drawbacks.

Gravity fed guns offer the ideal for portability as they only have one hose connection for air, while pressure fed guns have a hose for air and fluid. Gravity guns are also simpler to clean up due to having a cup that holds only 2 quarts vs a pressure tank that holds a larger amount of material. In most situations users choose a gravity gun for touch up work or if they will be primarily spraying thin material in smaller quantities.

The best way to think of the methods of delivery is to break down what matters most to you as a user. For example if control of material and atomization air is your primary control, pressure fed spray guns are going to provide the best control. More specifically pressure fed guns that utilize a pressure tank with dual regulators. A dual regulated pressure tank gives you precise control over pressure of fluid both to the material and to the air that breaks the material up (the atomization air). An additional benefit of pressure guns is that they can spray thicker materials where gravity and suction spray guns may not effectively move material through the gun due to the material being to thick. The downside of pressure guns is they can be more expensive because you typically have to have both a spray gun and a pressure tank rather than a gravity or suction spray gun that do not have a pressure tank as a separate expense.

Finally a suction gun often is described as most comfortable to handle because the fluid component is below the gun and again there is only one hose connected to the gun. The biggest difference between a suction gun and a gravity gun is that the suction spray gun is even more limited in material thickness that it will spray because it depends on the suction force that is created from air movement to draw material through the gun while gravity depends on gravity to feed material to the gun. To be best informed about whether a gravity, suction, or pressure fed spray gun will best meet your needs it's always best to try out the different kinds of guns.