I have sprayed quite a bit of cerakote over the last 3 years or so. I started very basic with just an airbrush I already had and a home-built oven that used a hot plate and insulated tube. I blasted my first job with a hand held sandblaster that used a tube stuck in a bucket. I was just using a Porter Cable pancake compressor and had to stop frequently to let it build up pressure. But it was something I already had on hand. I did a few jobs with very minimal equipment in the beginning just to see if I could do it and get the results I wanted before I invested too much in it. Once I saw that I could, I started upgrading equipment every chance I got.
I figured out real quick that my air system needed some work. The two big problems were air volume and moisture. Moisture causes problems both spraying, and by clogging up your blast cabinet. Since my system was small, I needed a way to cool the air to help condense the moisture out of it. I took about 30 feet of old 3/8 copper line I had laying around and made a big spiral coil out of it, and made a big trap at the bottom of it. It looks like something you would see on a moonshine still. This helps cool the air and condense the moisture out of it, like a pre-separator. From there I ran hose over to and old 10 gallon air tank I had, to use as a secondary tank to increase my air volume. On the outlet of that I had my regulator and a store bought moisture separator. Once those things were done I had a decent volume of good dry air.
The first thing I bought (immediately after spraying my first rifle) was a blast cabinet so that I wasn't wasting all my blast media every time I blasted something. Since it wasn't a very technical piece of equipment I went cheap and bought from Harbor Freight. I will say though, get the biggest cabinet you can. I got the big 40 lb one thinking it would be plenty, but in reality it is barely big enough for longer barreled actions. I am really glad I didn't get the 30 lb cabinet.
http://www.harborfreight.com/abrasive-blast-cabinet-68893.html
I did a few rifles and stocks, and saved some money. The next weak link in my system was that home built oven. It caused me lots of trouble, and I had to baby-sit it all the time. Space in it was limited, temp control wasn't good. So the next upgrade I did was to get a 40" Masterbuilt electric smoker with digital temp control. That made life so much easier. I could run large batches, Yeti cups, all kinds of things. Plus using the digital temp control and timer, I could spray something late at night, throw it in the oven, and go to bed. It would be done in the morning. Not to mention you really need precise temp control if you are going to be doing any polymer framed pistols (3 hours at 185 degrees). The digital controls really helped to open up my schedule since I was doing things in my off time. But even the 40" Masterbuilt was barely big enough for long barreled actions. In fact, I had to take one of the racks and modify it where it would hang a piece from the very top of the oven, but it will work fine if you rig things around. They don't sell my exact model anymore, but this one is really close to the Masterbuilt I bought.
https://www.amazon.com/Masterbuilt-20070311-40-Inch-Controller-Electric/dp/B0048HU34Y
Later on my little pancake compressor finally gave up the ghost, and I upgraded to an Iron Horse 1.5 hp, 20 gallon, 5.6 cfm compressor. That made life much better as well.
Also somewhere in there I quit using the air brush, and started using the cheap spray gun they sell on the cerakote website. I never could justify dropping the coin for the Iwata spray gun they sell. Maybe if I made my living doing gun work, but I don't. The cheap one has worked just fine for me as long as I keep it clean. Looking at their website now, it looks like the cheap gun they sell now is a Paasche for $65. That is not the one I have. They used to sell a Chinese one for like $40, that is what I have. It has sprayed a lot of cerakote, for sure. There for a while I was doing a whole bunch of custom Yeti cups.