Air compressor

[strom]

I saw a do-it-yourself shop air compressor tip, and it kinda... expencive and complicated.

Here's what u do:

Get a compressor out of a refrigirator or sth similar... I'm sure you know where to find a dead fridge. Chances are, the compressor is still good. It's the black can-like thingie with a black box on the side and wires sticking out of the box and copper tubing going to wherever it goes.

These things are rubber mounted and usually just clamped on, so pulling it out shouldn't be a problem. Just bring pliers to cut the electrical cables and copper tubes.

All you need to do now is weld some adapters for your tools on the compressor. Test where it sucks air in and where does it blow out.

Caution... don't turn it on the side... it has some oil in it, and it should stay there.

Where the air is blowing out... you can connect that hose with a fire extinguisher or some sort of can, that can take some pressure. It's not necessary, but it helps a lot. Put on a psi meter, just in case... since these things don't turn themselves off automatically.

My kawa and car door were painted with a cheap toy-shop modeling air brush and a compressor as described above, and it worked great.

LP

[Jerry]

Tech tip on building your own compressor is:

http://facstaff.uww.edu/fieldsj/mcycle/Comp/

Depending on what you want, either approach will work. I tried the refrig compressor first, found it didn't put out enough volume of air at the pressures I wanted. However, it was small, easy to store, and did well for pumping up the occasional low tire. It is also very quiet.

Remember that when you cut the copper pipes you will be releasing Freon (most likely) into the atmosphere. Don't inhale any of this stuff!

[Dragonrider]

A side note . . . these also make excellent vacuum pumps.

[strom]

Originally posted by Jerry
Tech tip on building your own compressor is:

http://facstaff.uww.edu/fieldsj/mcycle/Comp/

Depending on what you want, either approach will work. I tried the refrig compressor first, found it didn't put out enough volume of air at the pressures I wanted. However, it was small, easy to store, and did well for pumping up the occasional low tire. It is also very quiet.

Remember that when you cut the copper pipes you will be releasing Freon (most likely) into the atmosphere. Don't inhale any of this stuff!

Jerry, if I were inviromentally friendly person, I'd put the XS in the living room and never start the beast.

All of my problems would be solved except one... I WANNA RIDE!

The fridge compressor is OK, but I don't know how much pressure you need. Bout 3 times the tire pressure is still safe for this thing, maybe more, but I didn't test it that far.

LP

[Jerry]

I had no problem with the refrig compressor set-up, but it does have limitations. I wanted higher volume of air for my pneumatic chisels, auto on/off at preset pressures (hard to crawl out from under the car to turn the compressor on and off by hand) and enough volume to seat tires on rims. (I have 4 trailers plus 2 cars and 2 bikes, so more tire work than I really want.)

In my case I got the compressor free, captive tank free, and found it quite easy to use standard pipe fittings to build the rig. Only machining (other than drilling a couple holes) was to use a die to thread the compressor's output pipe to accept a pipe thread fitting and the spot welds that make the compressor clutch solid. All parts are off-the-shelf from local hardware store, metal supply shop, and a farm supply store. Took a couple hours to build, including running to the store for parts and finding the mounting channel at the metal shop, but was really quite easy to do.

This may not be the best approach, but it was not very expensive and I wanted to see if it would work. I put it together many years ago, and it has done a good job for me.