Spray Paint Color Matching

[Hidronax]

Hello!

I recently bought a 3D printer and I am trying to make my own custom Lego pieces. Spray paint sticks to the custom pieces quite well, but it's being hard for me to find the right colors to match the LEGO ones.

Can anyone recommend brands of spray paint for specific colors?

Or maybe techniques used?

I'm looking in particular for Flat Dark Gold and Flat Silver, but I'd be interested in any color you have experience with, for future reference.

Thanks everybody, hopefully this topic can become a little database for people in my situation. 

[MAB]

You might get close for metallic type colours, but matching base colours will be very difficult. What sort of spraying are you doing? From a cannister or using an airbrush? You will almost certainly have to blend pains to get a decent match. I've airbrushed vallejo acrylic paints onto minifigure parts before. The results are ok but the paint tends to be a bit fragile but not too bad for minifigure parts (where pieces tend not to butt up against others). For bricks, forget it. It scratches off too easily when scraped against another one during building. 

[Hidronax]

I'd be doing from spray cans, because I couldn't justify the cost of an airbrush at the moment... It gets much more tricky because I can't mix colours like this. I've tried these two cans for gold and silver, the quality of the paint seems quite good (the paint covers well the base color, the coating seems quite resistant and the detail is intact), it's just the color that is a bit off. In particular the fact that they're a bit "sparkly".
I'm attaching some photos of the results and of the cans.

At the moment I am working with Bionicle parts, so in a way they're not subject to the same conditions as bricks, but being quite big it is easy to get scratches maybe (from the weapons held by the character etc). I'll share results if I have more, I'll probably get a clear protective spray too.

Compairson
Paint used

 

[MAB]

The paint will almost certainly scratch if it goes near ball joints. A big problem is that sort of spray paint is quite thick, especially if using two or more coats, significantly thicker than typical tolerance levels between parts.

[Wardancer]

Hmm very difficult. I spraypainted a patronus recently, color matching with spray is almost impossible.

I have collected some color matching information here: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/64353-the-eurobricks-mcw-color-matching-paint-database/

This is mainly for Revell paint for normal brushes. Revell does make spray paint, too, and I guess they might use the same paint for the spray as for the Little cans. Also there is a link to lists of RGB codes of paint makers in the thread which might help. 

[Hidronax]

On 10/11/2020 at 10:19 AM, Wardancer said:

I have collected some color matching information here: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/64353-the-eurobricks-mcw-color-matching-paint-database/

Thanks Wardancer, that's pretty much what I was hoping for.

I've seen online that some people got very very good results, but I guess they all used an airbrush. Maybe I'll look into it, I'll see if a cheap airbrush can do the job, and if I need a large space to use it.

Thanks for the help everybody :)