Air assist Idea "think SCUBA tanks"

[Joe Walmer]

Most of use probably use the little oiless piston pumps for air assists for our lasers so the lens is not contaminated. That is why just using a large accumulator filled from a "shop air compressor" is not ideal even though you may have one feet away. My Idea is to have a scuba tank or two and have them filled each day at the dive shop I used to work at in town (1 of about 10 dive shops locally 20 counting the next towns over). Now this air compressor gets tested twice a year for contaminants and has to pass with flying colors for PADI certification. This is a multi thousands of dollars compressor maybe 10k after they got it retrofitted for Insurance reasons.

So if its good enough to breath at 200 feet and the air is lab certified with a certificate on the wall up to date then I am sure its actually ideal for a laser I would say. Two tanks at 3200 psi would last me all day or more at 10-20 psi. and would allow me to experiment with fine tuning air levels with different cutting. Normal air fills are 3 bucks each but they wouldn't charge me as I make signs for them and worked there for 10 years. Hopefully my workload will outpace the capacity though at any rate it can be used for a mobile solution as we go to Flea markets etc. here in Florida and be a silent solution and leave out all the condensation and noise not to mention extra draw on electricity.

Plus there would be no Noise and it would give me an excuse to play with my arduino (micro controller) more.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Regulating it down may be a problem,I have a 330 bar compressor here for scuba tanks and several 50 litre 305 bar tanks to go with it.

I'd run the numbers for those tanks, you may not get enough air in a typical 16 ltr tank to last all day at 20 psi

[Joe Walmer]

Well all day right now for me is 2-3 hours on a good day. I am lucky I have a high profit to low time items. Anyway I plan on using it as a stepping stone until I get rich and have my own clean air source. Might as well try it if the air is free and you have the tanks around. It may get me through each day at first and save energy. But yeah now that I think of it its not that much volume but I bet I t can get me through 10 custom items at a flea market which would also be a good day right now.

I wonder how much volume at 14.7 psi the standard little piston pumps put out in a minute etc.

The other dive shop I worked at had 2 huge ballast tanks as accumulators. That would be nice to have full of clean air.

[Rich Harman]

Standard scuba tank is 80 cubic feet. You would need about one an hour - that's if you run it real slow. I would go through one every 20 minutes.

[Dave Sheldrake]

I wonder how much volume at 14.7 psi the standard little piston pumps put out in a minute etc.

The ACO series of pumps are named by their LPM so an ACO250 pumps 250 LPM BUT they have a max pressure of a touch under 7 psi.

To be honest you don't need dive quality air for lasers, I have a bean can filter full of silica cat litter keeping my air dry on the smaller machines running from Junwei 6 motor/ 12 pump oil less compressors.

[Mike Clarke]

It sounds like over kill on the air quality. I wouldn't want to go through relying on an outside source for air and have to make daily trips to get it. I would truly explore an in-house air source and some filtering.

Just using traps on the hard lines and regularly draining the lines & tank on a normal compressor helps a lot. All the piping angles to the drains. SS ball valve are nice for ease of use. You can even fashion a coil for cooling if you want to.

What does this mean:GCC Pinnacle Mercury 25x18 30 watt (down)

[Kev Williams]

What would it be like to have enough free time to engineer a scuba tank to blow cleaner air into a laser? :D

How about this instead? With a couple of fittings it can be plumbed into ANY air line-

http://www.engraver1.com/erase2/airfilter.jpg

[Jerome Stanek]

If you can find a homefill unit from invocare you could fill your own tanks with oxygen that is medical approved

[Jeff Body]

If you can find a homefill unit from invocare you could fill your own tanks with oxygen that is medical approved

Public service announcement.
Never ever think of pointing oxygen at the end of a laser.
Air does not equal Oxygen. There's only 21% of oxygen in air.
100% oxygen = fire

[Bert Kemp]

very good Kev, easy peezee and cheap .



What would it be like to have enough free time to engineer a scuba tank to blow cleaner air into a laser? :D

How about this instead? With a couple of fittings it can be plumbed into ANY air line-

http://www.engraver1.com/erase2/airfilter.jpg

[Dave Sheldrake]

If you can find a homefill unit from invocare you could fill your own tanks with oxygen that is medical approved

Bad bad bad idea, I've seen the results of an Oxygen fuelled explosion on a laser up close. Suffice to say 2 of the dead were identified by DNA

[Rich Harman]

What would it be like to have enough free time to engineer a scuba tank to blow cleaner air into a laser? :D

How about this instead? With a couple of fittings it can be plumbed into ANY air line-

http://www.engraver1.com/erase2/airfilter.jpg
Those things barely work. Yes, they do remove some water, but not remotely close to all of it.

[Joe Walmer]

It sounds like over kill on the air quality. I wouldn't want to go through relying on an outside source for air and have to make daily trips to get it. I would truly explore an in-house air source and some filtering.

Just using traps on the hard lines and regularly draining the lines & tank on a normal compressor helps a lot. All the piping angles to the drains. SS ball valve are nice for ease of use. You can even fashion a coil for cooling if you want to.

What does this mean:GCC Pinnacle Mercury 25x18 30 watt (down)

My laser tube is probably in need of refill on the mercury so I am not using it.

[Wilbur Harris]

Y'all all know that I don't know what I'm talking about but it seems like this is a really XXXX discussion. Why not just blow plain old air on it, as cheaply as possible, and be done. I'm thinking that breathing air is what I'm sitting in and the only reason to use anything else is if that's not available....and I can't imagine why that would be. Again, I prolly don't know what I'm talking about....my laser (Chinese) came with two air pumps that make very little noise and seem to work just fine.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Y'all all know that I don't know what I'm talking about but it seems like this is a really XXXX discussion. Why not just blow plain old air on it, as cheaply as possible, and be done. I'm thinking that breathing air is what I'm sitting in and the only reason to use anything else is if that's not available....and I can't imagine why that would be. Again, I prolly don't know what I'm talking about....my laser (Chinese) came with two air pumps that make very little noise and seem to work just fine.

You may think you don't know what you are on about Wil but you pretty much nailed this one :)