With regards to this, is it fine to blast acetone through the airbrush or soak the needle in acetone to loosen and dissolve any paint accumulation?
Never sprayed Acetone through anything personally so I can't give you any anecdotal advice on that. I use alcohol to clean my airbrushes and once in a great while I'll really soak it and scrub it with some Lacquer thinner, which I don't spray out afterwords as that stuff is too nasty to bother with for all but the most caked on paint.
I hate to recommend anyone using lacquer thinner though that stuff is just foul. But it's effective. I've taken apart my brush, removed all the little parts that don't need to be cleaned and soaked it in the devil's brew overnight a few times. Probably not too good for it but I've never had it destroy a brush or anything. Next time I really have to clean my brush down I'm planning on using this cleaner I've found that I use to strip paint with called "Totally Awesome" (yes, really that's the name). It works great for stripping paint from just about anything so I'm thinking of giving it a shot of cleaning my brush when it gets bad. But, that will be some time coming as I just got a brand new brush so I won't need to experiment with that for some time.
*You know come to think of it in my early 20's I had a job at an optical lens lab and I use to strip and clean our tools in big vats of acetone overnight. I'd leave em in there with a lid and come back in the morning and rinse them out and they'd be fine. But here's the reason I posted this, I left a rubber glove in the vat one night just to see what would happen and in the morning the acetone had eaten it, so yeah as mentioned above, maybe not the best thing for any rubber gaskets and seals in your device.
