Mini Compressor Update :)

[Frizzle Fry]

Have the AO ad banners gotten smarter?

Every time I look at this thread it advertises either a shop compressor or related parts... I'm aware that content-based ads have been around forever, I just never realized we had'em here. I wonder what would happen if we started a thread about bras and panties; Victorias Secret ads?

[Ando]

http://www.airchecklab.com/about-trace-analytics.html

They do sell kits or they can get you in contact with a person to do the test in your area.

[Jaron]

I wonder what would happen if we started a thread about bras and panties; Victorias Secret ads?

You can always try, though I'm not sure what the mods would think.

[Frizzle Fry]

You can always try, though I'm not sure what the mods would think.

Shirow beat me to it. Pop over and talk undies with us

[criticalhammer]

I'm one of the people who fall into the "does not have an air compressor" category. Worse yet I live in an apartment so I cant go buy one. With that said how long would a fill take at your current RPM speed without the 85 psi input?

[matteusz]

Matt,

Thanks for the offer and the help! I am hoping to sell them into the air gun market so once things get going we can talk.

I am now testing the final design configuration for weak links. Next is lifetime testing.

AGD

No problem Tom I am excited to see this project come to fruition. You should go over to the Talon forum and see the flack they are giving me! Man I thought paintballers could be jaded and sceptical. Airgunners add new dimesion to the attitude. I should have known that from when I started selling them products that were not available at the time.

Anyway scuba tanks will be important to this crowd as they all want to fill larger volume than most paintballers. If it fits with your other testing it would be nice to get some stats on how long larger volumes take with the final models.

Mat

[joelbird]

I like this idea but not for my paintball tanks. I wanna use it for my power tank for off roading. it would be a scuba tank but I may need it filled within the week between two trips. This might be a direction to look at.

[jade_monkey07]

I'm looking forward to this, except i dont have a shop compressor.....

__________________________

[Ratzo]

Since it would use the pressure from the tank on the compressor to fill with.
Could you hook up a scuba tank to feed this contraption to fill an HPA bottle? Just curious.

[boarder2k7]

Sir Kaye, I must say this is simply amazing!!

This is great news for me since all of the places that used to fill near me closed or no longer fill tanks, but just sell gear.

I thought of trying to make one of these myself a while back, and totally forgot about it after figuring that I could never make it fill tanks at a reasonable rate or be durable enough to bother with. I didn't think of pre-pressurizing the input which is a great idea! (That and I was 15 at the time and had no facilities to try it )

As a curiosity, would it be possible to make a model that could handle a 140ish PSI input or more? I realize that if you're going for an 85 PSI input that the higher pressure could overstress the motor, so that wouldn't be good, but my primary compressor will hit 150 and my smaller one hits 200... I'm not sure how much of a difference at all this would make in the fill time.

I would personally love to get a the highest end model that I could, if only because I'm a sucker for well built stuff, although getting this will come after I finally get to pick up an Xmag....

@Ratzo
You could use a regulator from another air tank to drop the input pressure down to 85 PSI to feed this, and let it boost it back up, but that would be rather inefficient. You would then be using up your 3k fill to fill a 4500 fill, might as well use the 3k to directly fop off the 4.5k tank and then use this little compressor to top off the last 1500 PSI, it would take much less time like that. I think the other best bet if you have access to 3k PSI tanks is to get a booster like the shop near me used to use to bump the 3k tank up to 4500 for their fills.

And to those who don't have a compressor... These cost between $50 and $80 depending on sales and are a great compressor. Although any little direct compressor you have around could work. You could then use a pressure switch feeding some small tank as a buffer. I think most of you probably have one of those little 5 gallon tanks you fill up at a gas station or whatnot to top off your tires? That would work as a buffer tank. Not an ideal solution I know but its the cheapest thing that I could come up with right now.

There are also some reconditioned Hitachi air compressors up on eBay that are about $125 that would probably be similar in end cost and less of a headache unless you happened to already have some of the parts to try it that other way I mentioned.

-B

Oh and Merry Christmas guys!

[AGD]

More pressure will fill tanks faster but I am sizing the motor to accommodate the 85 psi input. If you wanted to spend more money on a better motor then you could probably go with a higher input. The motor is under a lot of stress with the high pressures in the pistons.

AGD

[ta2maki]

And to those who don't have a compressor... These cost between $50 and $80 depending on sales and are a great compressor. Although any little direct compressor you have around could work. You could then use a pressure switch feeding some small tank as a buffer. I think most of you probably have one of those little 5 gallon tanks you fill up at a gas station or whatnot to top off your tires? That would work as a buffer tank. Not an ideal solution I know but its the cheapest thing that I could come up with right now.

There are also some reconditioned Hitachi air compressors up on eBay that are about $125 that would probably be similar in end cost and less of a headache unless you happened to already have some of the parts to try it that other way I mentioned.

-B

Oh and Merry Christmas guys!

From the looks of it you can probably get away with a tiny pancake compressor like this. Although you may have to run this in your basement as it will kick on more frequently, it would be a cheaper and overall better solution.

[doc_Zox]

could you use one of these that you fill from a gas station compressor?
30 dollar, 5 Gallon, 125 PSI Portable Pancake Air Tank

[EdgePaintball.com]

Agd,

Hey this is Matt Shook from Ks. I have something I have used at D-Day you might be interested in. I dont want to ackowledge it to the public. Please email me at [email protected]. or call the store.

Thanks
Matt Shook

National Pro Shop
The Edge Paintball Adventures

https://www.wichitapaintball.com

[boarder2k7]

More pressure will fill tanks faster but I am sizing the motor to accommodate the 85 psi input. If you wanted to spend more money on a better motor then you could probably go with a higher input. The motor is under a lot of stress with the high pressures in the pistons.

Alright that sounds good. How big of a motor are we talking about? 1/2 horsepower? If yours is 1kW then its a little under a quarter right?
I think I would like to buy the compressor with whatever motor you put on it, and then when using it at my house, swap on a big motor (if that would be possible), and take it off and put the stock back on when I want to transport it or let someone else use it.

From the looks of it you can probably get away with a tiny pancake compressor like this. Although you may have to run this in your basement as it will kick on more frequently, it would be a cheaper and overall better solution.

Yeah that would definitely be a much better solution. I meant that if someone already had some or most of those parts, then it would be cheap to put it together as I mentioned, otherwise you would be way better off buying a small compressor.

could you use one of these that you fill from a gas station compressor?
30 dollar, 5 Gallon, 125 PSI Portable Pancake Air Tank

Not really. The problem is that you need to have almost 12 cubic feet of air at atmospheric pressure to fill a 68ci tank to 4500 PSI.
5 gallons is 0.67 cubic feet
12CF*15PSI=180
0.67CF*xPSI=180
In this case x = 254 PSI, and that would not be possible with that tank.
For 125 PSI to work you would need:
xCF*140PSI=180
This would be 1.28 CF or almost 10 gallons.

The other problem would be that I don't think the gas stations will fill much past 50 PSI, higher than most tires. This would be by the same math 2.8CF or almost 21 gallons.

Note: For PV calculations to work, I am working off of absolute pressures, so ground is set at 15. This is why the 125PSI tank charge calculation is done at 140PSI.

Also these are "exact" numbers, working as if you could get all of the air out of the donor tank into the fill tank, assuming no leakage. Since you aren't really going to pull a full vacuum in the donor tank, and leaks are always inevitable in some manner or another, the donor tanks would have to be even bigger. I think without a compressor it just wouldn't be practical.

He did say though that it could pump up from ambient, just that it took much more time. That would mean that you could at least start it off with whatever tank you had until it was empty, and then let it finish the run pumping from ambient when the tank ran out. Either that or you could just keep refilling the donor tank as you had time to go get it filled, as long as it never got completely empty while it was attached (trying to pull a vacuum with the compressor) you would be fine.

-B