Eclipse HP-CS
Written by Hyjeauq   
Thursday, 07 February 2008

Straight from the Iwata-Medea website comes the Eclipse HP-CS.  A siphon fed, dual action, internal mix airbrush.

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 A couple of disclosures here. 

  1. I used to work for Iwata
  2. The joy of not working directly for them means I can say whatever I want.
  3. On the other hand I still do some writing for them.
  4. I've never used another brand, so I'll refrain from brand to brand comparisons.

Of all of Iwata's airbrushes the Eclipse is, by far, one of their top sellers.  And there's some excellent reasons why.

  1. It's forgiving of user errors.  Specifically, it's very forgiving of paint consistency mistakes.
  2. It's got the ability to do most of the fine details you need to get most jobs done.
  3. The background spray pattern is reasonably large.  Now, it ain't a spraygun but you can get some decently sized patterns out of it.
  4. It cleans up easily. No airbrush is really easy, but the self-centering nozzle just falls out.  Sweet!
  5. Replacement parts are inexpensive.  Nothing Iwata makes is cheap, so don't expect the parts to go for a song, but compared to the other airbrush lines Eclipse airbrush parts are not hard on your wallet.

I've recommended Eclipse airbrushes to beginners and pros alike without any guilt, because these airbrushes are in the butter zone of workhorse airbrushes.

Now on to the specifics of the HP-CS.

It’s gravity-fed.  This means it’s great for uses where you want to spray small amounts of paint.  You can spray a single drop of paint if you’re so inclined.  You can mix colors in the cup.  You can practice with small amounts of paint.  Since airbrush paint can be expensive gravity-fed airbrushes are economical.  If I was selling you these things I’d probably tack on how environmentally friendly they are compared to siphon-fed airbrushes, but let’s face it.  Spraying paint just doesn’t get environmentally friendly.  It gets ‘friendlier’ or becomes ‘containable’ but never really becomes friendly.

Also, this is it.  The Eclipse CS.  When in doubt, when you don’t have a compelling reason to use something else, begin with this airbrush.  This airbrush is my personal baseline that I compare everything else to.

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