Product Profile: Speed Rollers

The Speed Rollers tool turbo-charges traditional wall painting. Two rollers fed by an airless paint pump. One frame. What’s not to like?

The tool can reportedly put paint on walls three times faster than the dip-and-roll method, and it even outpaints power rollers. According to Speed Rollers manufacturer Trac Tool Products LLC, it can cover up to 100 square feet per minute.

The system’s two rollers are contained by a frame that comes in three widths: 18 inches, 9 inches and 7 inches. The airless pump feeds paint onto the top roller, which applies the paint. When the second roller follows, it spreads out the coating and makes the finish more even. Essentially, backrolling is done with the application stroke, which is one of the reasons Speed Rollers are so speedy. The lack of need for a roller pan is another.

The twin-roller tool can be used to apply both low-solid and high-solid coatings. The rollers are tough enough to apply wallpaper paste, chemical strippers, deck finishes, block filler and just about anything that comes out of a pail, says Shawn Donegan, president of Trac Tool Products LLC.

Skin doesn’t form on the rollers because they are consistently wet. “One advantage of this tool is you never have to stop,” Donegan says. “Basically, you put the roller on the wall and never take it off.”

When using Speed Rollers, contractors won’t have to worry about overspray. The tool achieves more than 90 percent transfer efficiency with no atomization. And despite its dual rollers and integrated drip and slash guards, the tool is still touted as being lightweight. A Changeover Kit includes replacements for rollers and fittings.

The tool may be used with any spray paint system. The learning curve isn’t daunting, either. Donegan notes two things that painters will need to get used to doing: feeding paint on the upward stroke — as it’s the top roller that applies, while the bottom one simply backrolls — and not overusing the spray trigger.

Speed Rollers was introduced at the Painting and Decorating Contractors of America conference in 2004.