scuba vs paintball

[hardr0ck68]

ok so a couple weeks back i was talking to a scuba shop guy, he dose visual inspections and whatnot and i was talking to him about paintball air systems and what he thought and why they dont use carbon fiber wrapping and blah balh balh....but he said to me that one thing he dosent understand is who is locktighting the reg's into the bottles, he said that 1st off the manufacture of the bottles recomends a non-grease based lubercant for those threads (not a abheasive) and 2nd off that with 10psi of air pressure in the bottle that reg will not turn at all anyways. he also told me that you need to leave at least that much air in the bottle at all times (execpt flying) to prevent moist air to contaminate the bottle...he said under pressure the moisture in the air will rot the amuninum causing the tank to fail hyrdro...so always keep at least 10 psi in there (100 is perferable but over 10 will work) so yeah i was woundering why scuba has all this knowledge and the world of paintball dose not....

[FalconGuy016]

The alluminum rusting scares me.

[Fuji]

Actually, the guy who was doing HPA fills at the Pan Am tourney gave me the same lecture about emptying out my air tank after every day of play. He also said that technically he wasn't supposed to refill until it got retested.

As far as loctite goes. When I got my 2 tanks rehydro'd that guy told us not to loctite also. Since they may damage it when rehydro'ing. He also said that it shouldn't unscrew once it has some pressure in it.

[S.S Bandit1]

my paintball team is sponsored by a local scuba store. I have heard the exact same thing from the owner I talk to about people lock tightening their paintball tanks. A lot of people do it because they dont want to got out an get a 50 cent main seal o-ring for there reg or they just have no clue what they are doing. Whats even worse is that some companies even manufacture them that way now. I don't know whats up with that. I really like my Angel AIR because I never put anything on the reg threads and have never replaced the main seal and it has never leaked.

I think a lot of the scuba people have more knowledge about air systems because they have been using them for years before anyone started to use them for paintball.

[Smokee_2_7]

Because the scuba world is a little more in touch with things. We (scuba divers) depend on those tanks for our lives EVERY time we partake in our hobby/ occupation. As far as no-seal on threads, and keeping a little bit of air in there at all times, Those are things that I was told near the beginning of my scuba training. Not sure why it's not "common knowledge" in the paintball world, but i do believe it should be.

[brett]

Another big thing is flash filling, and over filling the tanks. Probably about 90% of all the people at p-ball shops dont know how to even fill a cylinder correctly. A lot of idiots at my field often overfill there tanks by 500-700psi onm occations just because they think its cool and want to look tough.
The correct way to fill a tank is around 300-500 psi per minute and the SLOWEST I have ever seen a shop or field fill at is 1000 psi per min. Filling a tank too fast causes heat as we all know, and with fiber tanks the carbon fiber and the aluminum wall get weaken every time the tank gets to hot.
I'm not sure were this happened, but a firefighter took his breathing tank and used is as a chalk for the fire truck. It got filled later that day and was put back into the fire truck. When it was under the trucks wheel the carbon and aluminum were slightly crushed but not visible on the outside, and about 30 min later the tank gave away and it blew the fire truck in HALF also lifting it into the air! If it blew when it was being filled a number of people could have died or seriusly injured.
The most common time (which is a very rare accurance) a tank blows is when its being filled (and that is being filled properly) so I'm surprised that we dont hear more about tanks exploding more often in the paintball world, but that is a good thing!

ahhhh thanks for letting me rant. I was going to make a thread about this subject but thought I would put it here.

Thanks,
Brett

[beefstew]

yes, whenever i dont fill a scuba for a litle while and go and do it, it makes me think of how long it takes to do it at the right amount of PSI per minute, i sat there for about 10 minutes, and to disipate the heat, the guy always throws my tank in a tub of water (usually a practice done to steel tanks, but can be used for aluminum also, the water "steals" the heat quickly) so it doesnt get too hot and lose psi later.
phil

[Animal Mother]

Wow.. I need to go even slower... whenever i see someone fill a tank they open the valve all the way and then close it.

I open it slowly and it takes me maybe a full minute to top my tank off at 3000psi.

I'm gonna go even slower now. i bought a brand new Flatline for $365... $365 abd it WILL last me forever!! lol

[252]

first off, im IDEA scuba certified.

Yeah, you should keep ~100PSI in tanks. WIth real Scuba tanks you HAVE to keep at least 500PSI in them.

The reason Scuba people have all these rules and regulations is that a Scuba tanks supports your life underwater, and a N2 Pball tank just powers your gun.

Big diff, IMHO.


:cool: