Paint Sprayer Tip Size Chart: Read the Code Before You Spray

You are standing in front of a wall that took four hours to mask, holding a gun loaded with a tip you grabbed because it was on top of the pile. Ten minutes later the surface shows the truth: heavy stripes on the edges, a spitting center, and paint running down every trim line. The tip did that, not the sprayer and not the paint. A paint sprayer tip size chart would have told you why before the first pass.

The chart is not a wall of random numbers. Every airless tip in the industry, from Graco RAC and SwitchTip lines to Titan, Wagner, and most major brands, carries the same three-digit code, and that code is the entire selection system. Learn to read it once and you can pick a tip for any coating, any surface, and any pump for the rest of your career. This guide walks through the code, the flow rate table behind it, the orifice sizes each material needs, and the mistakes that show up as ruined finishes. The numbers come from the same public charts manufacturers publish: flow rates rated with water at 2,000 psi (138 bar) and fan widths measured 12 in (305 mm) from the surface.

The Three-Digit Tip Code Is the Whole Chart

Take any airless tip and look at the number stamped on the flat face: 517, 311, 625, 835. It is always three digits, and it always means the same two things.

The first digit, multiplied by two, gives the fan width in inches. A 5 means a 10-inch fan; a 3 means a 6-inch fan; a 7 means a 14-inch fan. The width is measured when the gun is held 12 in (305 mm) from the surface, which is the standard testing distance for every Graco tip. The same convention works in metric: multiply the first digit by five and you get the fan width in centimeters at a 30 cm standoff. A 5 is roughly a 25 cm fan, and it corresponds to a 50° spray angle. The first digit is effectively a spray angle in tens of degrees.

The last two digits give the orifice diameter in thousandths of an inch. A 517 has an orifice of 0.017 in (0.43 mm). A 515 has 0.015 in, and a 519 has 0.019 in. The orifice is the hole the paint is forced through, and it is the single biggest factor in how much material leaves the gun per minute and how finely the paint atomizes.

So 517 reads as: 10-inch fan, 0.017-inch orifice. That is the entire code. BlastOne, a Graco distributor, adds a useful refinement: the doubled first digit is the minimum fan width, and you can expect roughly two inches more at the working distance, so a 4 gives you an 8-10 in pattern, a 5 gives 10-12 in, and a 6 gives 12-14 in. When a manufacturer quotes a tip range like “517-519,” the first two digits are fixed fan widths and the last two are the orifice options you choose by material.

One warning before you memorize anything: the color of the tip body is a shortcut, not a standard. A black RAC 5 tip and a blue RAC X tip of the same number will be rated identically, but fine-finish tips, low-pressure tips, and line-striping tips use the same three-digit code with different flow behavior, and their guards are not interchangeable. Always read the stamped number, and always check which tip family it belongs to. More on families later.

The Flow Rate Table: What Each Orifice Actually Delivers

The orifice number is not just a physical dimension. It is the flow rating of the tip. Manufacturers rate airless tips by how many gallons per minute (GPM) the tip passes, and the published flow rate table is the same across the major lines. The table below shows the standard values for airless spray tips, rated with water at 2,000 psi (13.8 MPa), which is the industry reference condition Graco and others use:

Orifice (in)	Orifice (mm)	Flow at 2,000 psi (GPM)	Flow at 2,000 psi (L/min)
0.009	0.23	0.09	0.3
0.011	0.28	0.12	0.5
0.013	0.33	0.18	0.7
0.015	0.38	0.24	0.9
0.017	0.43	0.31	1.2
0.019	0.48	0.38	1.5
0.021	0.53	0.47	1.8
0.023	0.58	0.57	2.2
0.025	0.64	0.67	2.5
0.027	0.69	0.77	3.0
0.029	0.74	0.90	3.4
0.031	0.79	1.03	3.9
0.033	0.84	1.17	4.4
0.035	0.89	1.31	5.0
0.039	0.99	1.63	6.2
0.043	1.09	1.98	7.5
0.045	1.14	2.17	8.2
0.051	1.30	2.79	10.7
0.055	1.40	3.25	12.3
0.063	1.60	4.26	16.1
0.065	1.65	4.53	17.2

Two physics rules sit underneath this table, and they explain every selection decision you will ever make.

Flow scales with the area of the orifice. Going from 0.015 to 0.017 is a 13% increase in diameter but roughly a 28% increase in area, and the flow jumps from 0.24 to 0.31 GPM, which is a 29% jump. That is why one tip size up can be the difference between a clean finish and a sagging one. Small orifice changes are large flow changes.

Flow scales with the square root of pressure. The same 0.017 tip that passes 0.31 GPM at 2,000 psi passes about 0.44 GPM at 4,000 psi, because flow follows Q = K√P. This matters twice: first, raising pressure is a weak way to get more output, and second, a pump that cannot hold its rated pressure will silently turn a 517 into a 413 in terms of what actually lands on the wall. Graco’s manuals are blunt about the remedy: if you need more coverage, use a larger tip, do not crank the pressure.

Two caveats apply to every row. The table is water at 2,000 psi; heavier paint flows less than water through the same orifice, so a latex at working viscosity will deliver noticeably less than the rated GPM. And these are standard airless tip ratings. Fine-finish tips with a pre-orifice, like the Graco FFLP line, carry their own flow curve, and line-striping tips are tested at a different distance, so compare like with like.

Match the Orifice to the Material

This is where the paint sprayer tip size chart stops being arithmetic and becomes application. Every coating has a viscosity band that atomizes cleanly through a specific orifice range. Too small, and the tip cannot pass the material, the pump strains, and the pattern sputters. Too large, and thin material floods the surface, runs, and wastes paint on overspray.

The classic selection chart, published by Graco in its RAC X tip documentation, is organized by material family:

Material	Orifice range (in)	Typical tip codes
Oil-based stains, lacquers, clear coats	0.009-0.013	209-413
Oil-based enamels, industrial enamels	0.013-0.015	313-515
Latex paint	0.015-0.019	415-519
Heavy latex, smooth elastomerics	0.021-0.025	421-525
Elastomerics and block fillers	0.025-0.039	525-639

Graco’s European application guide refines the same logic into a much longer list, and it is worth having in your head because it shows how the orifice range tracks viscosity, from brush-and-roll quality fine finish paints at 0.008-0.010 up through epoxies at 0.043-0.061 and asphalt at 0.031-0.071:

• Varnish: 0.010-0.014 in
• Stain: 0.012-0.014 in
• Oil-based paint and urethanes: 0.012-0.014 in
• Latex, acrylic, silicate paints: 0.015-0.019 in
• Emulsions: 0.017-0.021 in
• Silicone coatings: 0.021-0.025 in
• Block fillers: 0.023-0.025 in
• High-production projects: 0.025-0.031 in
• Elastomerics: 0.027-0.033 in
• Fire-retardant materials: 0.029-0.035 in
• Airless plasters: 0.029-0.041 in
• Mastics: 0.041-0.047 in
• Epoxies: 0.043-0.061 in

Read the range, then pick the tip number that combines it with the fan width you need. For interior latex walls, the classic production choice is a 515 or 517: 10-inch fan, 0.015-0.017 orifice. For exterior latex siding, painters commonly move to 517-519. For thin stains and lacquers on trim, a fine-finish tip like a 310 or 410 (0.010 orifice, 6-8 in fan) is the better tool, because the small orifice atomizes thin material into a fine mist instead of flooding it.

A practical rule of thumb holds across all of these: when the coating is thicker, move up an orifice step; when you are spraying a thinner material and want a finer finish, move down. The published ranges are guidance, not law. Temperature changes viscosity, and some premium latex paints atomize fine through a 0.015 orifice while heavy-bodied versions of the same product want 0.019. Spray a test pattern on scrap first, every time.

Fan Width Is a Production Decision

The first digit of the tip code is a production decision disguised as a geometry number. It determines how many passes cover a given surface, and it directly controls how much material hangs in the air as overspray.

For architectural work, the practical starting points are consistent across painter references: interior walls and ceilings use a 12-inch fan, which is the 6 series, codes like 617-619; trim, fascia, and narrow surfaces use a 6-8 in fan, the 3 and 4 series; doors and cabinets in fine finish use an 8-10 in fan, the 4 and 5 series with small orifices; and heavy-build floor coatings or wide exterior surfaces use a 12-16 in fan, the 6 through 8 series. Match the fan to the smallest dimension you have to cover cleanly. A 12-inch fan on a 4-inch door frame does not speed anything up; it just sprays three-quarters of the material into the air.

Two fan-width facts bite every operator sooner or later. First, the fan widens as you move the gun away from the surface, and it narrows as you move closer, while the orifice keeps passing the same amount of paint. Hold the gun at 18 in and you get a wider, thinner, drier pattern; hold it at 6 in and you concentrate the full flow into a narrow strip, which is exactly how runs happen. The 10-12 in standoff that the tip codes assume is not a suggestion. Second, a wider fan produces more overspray at the tail edges of the pattern. On exterior work where drift onto cars or neighbors matters, dropping one fan size and slowing down gun speed cuts overspray at the cost of production rate. There is no free fan width.

Tip Families: Color, Guard, and Where Each One Belongs

The three-digit code is shared, but the tips themselves are not all the same tool. Graco organizes its airless tips into families, each with a color, a guard, and a job, and the same structure exists in other brands’ catalogs:

• RAC 5 tips (black) are the classic, most common airless tip, standard equipment on Graco sprayers for years, and they fit the orange RAC 5 and RAC IV guards. They cover the widest range of sizes, roughly 0.007-0.065 in orifices, and handle everything from lacquers to mastics.
• RAC X tips (blue) are the newer professional line, original equipment on Graco contractor-series sprayers, designed for latex and general professional work, and they fit the blue RAC X guard. Larger sizes handle heavy-duty work at up to 4,000 psi.
• FFLP fine-finish tips (green) cover 0.008-0.016 in orifices and are built for cabinetry, woodwork, and metal with lacquers, varnishes, urethanes, and stains. They use a pre-orifice that produces finer atomization, and they spray at 30-50% lower pressure than standard tips, which means less overspray, better control of film thickness, and fewer runners. They need the RAC X HandTite guard.
• XHD heavy-duty tips (gray handle) are for thick materials: elastomerics, textures, block fillers, pipeline and tank coatings. They are screw-anchored in their heavy-duty guard so vibration does not shake them loose, which matters on bridge and structural work.
• LL5 line-striping tips (yellow) are built for airless marking machines and traffic paint, producing clean, sharp line edges. They are tested at 6 in rather than 12 in, because that is where a striping gun actually runs.
• WideRAC tips (white) spray an extra-wide 24-inch fan for high production on large concrete and block surfaces, with orifices from 0.021 to 0.039 in.

Guard compatibility is the detail that wastes the most time on site. A RAC X tip only locks into a RAC X guard, and a RAC 5 tip only locks into a RAC 5 or RAC IV guard. Buying a blue tip when your gun carries an orange guard, or the reverse, means a trip back to the truck. The tip number tells you nothing about this, so check the family before you check the size. When you are ordering a replacement for a spray gun, quote both the tip number and the guard type to your supplier.

Common Tip-Size Mistakes and the Pattern That Tells You

Almost every finish failure on an airless job traces back to one of five tip-size mistakes. Each one leaves a recognizable signature, and once you know the signature you can diagnose the fix in seconds.

Orifice too large for the pump. This is the most expensive mistake because it looks like a pump problem. The tip’s rated flow exceeds the machine’s maximum flow, so the pump cannot hold pressure, the motor cycles, and the pattern sputters and spits. The fix is not a new pump; it is a smaller tip. Graco’s manual rule is absolute: never use a tip larger than the maximum flow rate the sprayer can accommodate. Check your pump’s rated GPM against the flow table before you buy tips.

Pressure used as a substitute for tip size. When the pattern is too thin, the instinct is to crank the pressure. That is backwards. Higher pressure does raise flow, but only by the square root of the pressure change, and it costs you: more overspray, earlier tip wear, and a harsher pattern. The manufacturer guidance is explicit: if you need more coverage, step up to a larger tip rather than increasing pressure.

Wrong orifice for the material. A 0.017 tip loaded with thin stain floods and sags; a 0.011 tip loaded with heavy latex clogs and sputters. The material-to-orifice tables exist precisely because of this. Match the coating first, then the pump.

Worn tip kept in service. This deserves its own section below, but in short: a worn tip flows like the next size up while spraying a narrower, weaker pattern, and it ruins finishes quietly.

Fan width mismatched to the surface. Too wide means overspray and waste; too narrow means extra passes, lap marks, and dry edges between passes. Both read as coverage failures that no pressure adjustment fixes.

The good news: your spray pattern is a diagnostic instrument. A clean, even, well-filled rectangular fan with sharp edges means the tip, pressure, and material are in agreement. Rough edges or tails on the pattern mean the tip is dirty, chipped, or worn. A spitting center with a decent outline usually means the pressure is too low for the material, or the orifice is too large for the pump. Heavy buildup in the center of the fan with thin edges is the classic worn-tip signature. If you are chasing streaks and banding, the pattern check belongs before any other troubleshooting, and it is worth reviewing how coating line streaks trace back to pattern defects.

Tip Wear: When the Chart Stops Being True

The flow table is only true for a new tip. Airless tips wear, because coatings carry abrasive pigments and the paint is forced through the orifice at extreme pressure, up to 350 bar (about 5,000 psi) in heavy-duty systems. The erosion mechanism is simple: the orifice grows larger while the fan narrows.

Graco describes the failure sequence precisely. As the tip wears, the orifice gets bigger and the fan width decreases, so the pattern evolves from a rounded rectangle into a smaller, more oval shape. By the time the pattern looks like an oval diamond, the tip is done. The quantitative check is fan width: replace the tip when the fan width is about 25% less than a new tip. A tip that sprayed a 10 in fan when new should be retired by the time it sprays about 7 in. The economics are lopsided: a worn tip delivers more paint onto a smaller area, which Graco summarizes as twice the work plus roughly 30% more material for the same surface. The tip costs a fraction of the paint it wastes.

Tip life is material-dependent, and the published replacement intervals are worth treating as a schedule, not a suggestion. Graco’s guidance for standard tips: latex wears a tip in about 15-40 gallons of sprayed material, while oils and stains last longer, about 35-60 gallons. Abrasive primers and elastomerics will be on the short end of any range. High pressure accelerates the damage, which is another reason to run the lowest pressure that atomizes the material cleanly.

There is also a subtle interaction with the pump: a worn tip that has grown one size effectively asks the pump to deliver the next size up, which is why a machine that was running fine suddenly starts cycling and losing pressure late in a job. The tip wore, not the pump. If your pattern shows the diamond signature, replace the tip before you diagnose the sprayer. For the full mechanical story of how worn orifices drift application rates, see the guide on nozzle wear and silent over-application.

Picking a Tip in Three Steps

Put the chart to work in a fixed order, and you will not need to memorize anything:

1. Identify the material. Find the coating’s viscosity band in the material table and write down the orifice range, for example 0.015-0.019 for latex. When in doubt, use the paint manufacturer’s recommendation printed on the can.
2. Pick the fan width. Match the first digit to the surface: 6 for interior walls and ceilings, 4-5 for doors and cabinets, 3-4 for trim, 6-8 for heavy-build floors and wide exteriors. Combine the two into a three-digit code, like 517.
3. Check it against the pump. Find the tip’s rated flow on the flow rate table and confirm it is at or below your sprayer’s maximum rated GPM. Then check that you have the right guard for the tip family.

FAQ

How do I know which tip size my airless sprayer needs?

Read the pump rating first. Every tip carries a published flow rate at 2,000 psi (138 bar). Pick the orifice whose rated flow sits at or below your sprayer’s rated GPM, then confirm the fan width suits the surface. A tip that demands more flow than the pump holds will cycle and lose pressure all the way down the wall.

What does a 517 tip mean?

A 517 is a 10 in fan at 12 in standoff with a 0.017 in orifice. The first digit doubled gives the fan width in inches, and the last two digits give the orifice in thousandths of an inch. The same tip flows about 0.31 GPM (1.2 L/min) at 2,000 psi.

Which tip size should I use for latex paint?

Architectural latex coatings run from 0.015 in to 0.021 in. Start at 0.017 in for a standard wall coat and step up to 0.019 in only when the pump still holds pressure and the fan breaks up anyway.

Do tip colors actually mean anything?

Color marks the guard family, not the size. A black RAC 5 and a blue RAC X carrying the same three-digit number have the same fan and orifice, and their guards are not interchangeable. Read the stamped number before you fit the tip.

How do I know when an airless tip is worn?

When its flow climbs above the rated figure for that orifice. A tip worn by one size asks the pump for the next size up, which shows up as pressure cycling and tails in the fan. Check the pattern and the pressure before you blame the sprayer, and replace the tip when the diamond signature appears.

If the pattern is still wrong after all three steps, the pressure is the remaining variable. Set it to the lowest value that gives a clean, fully atomized fan, and no higher. Every tip in this guide is a wearable part, and the spray gun that carries it will outlive dozens of them, so the economics always favor the correct tip, replaced on schedule, over the sprayer running wide open to compensate for a bad match. When you are ready to buy, a nozzle selection guide will walk through the rest of the gun-and-tip system, and our team can size the right tip for your coating line at contact.