Compressor shopping

M

Mikej2

Guest
Hello,

I did a little compressor shopping today and am looking for input on my thoughts.
I want something portable, something with at least a small air tank, and something quiet enough to use in a basement so that it doesn't bother someone directly above in the living room or kitchen.

Two that caught my interest today were the following:
http://m.homedepot.com/p/Husky-2-Gal-Electric-Hotdog-Air-Compressor-0100211A/206470707
This one is listed as being about 75dBA which might be a bit loud.

Then there was also this one listed as running at 68dBA which is a little better
http://m.homedepot.com/p/Senco-1-Ga...ake-Electric-Air-Compressor-PC1010N/205513089

Since the weather is starting to warm up, another option is to get a moisture trap and air regulator and set those up inline for the medium sized compressor that I have in the garage. But the budget is tight right now and setting up in the garage would be a good chunk on the way to just buying a small portable compressor.

Just putting this out here and thinking out loud, feel free to comment or give suggestions or cautions on what I'm currently considering.

Thank you in advance.
Mike
 
How far away is the garage from the house? Could you just get a long hose and have the regulator set up at the basement end for easy adjustment. Moisture trap is pretty much a must either way, you may get added condensation from going inside to outside and back in again, but empty the compressor after use and there shouldn't be an issue, and have a moisture trap at the compressor end, and a little one at the airbrush end just in case. I use a 250 litre compressor, which is halfway between my little shed and hubs workshop. It has a splitter on it and the hoses go to both areas, and moisture really isn't an issue for us. Spend a little cash making some sound proofing for the garage instead if needed, but you will have a bigger tank, and possibly a better, more robust motor, (depending on the compressor you already have ) which won't have to work so hard to keep up.

60 decibels is classed as normal conversation level, so anything above that may be a little noisy. Many people here use california air which are 60 decibels and they are pretty good value and seem reliable. Any quieter starts getting more expensive. If you can make what you have work though, seems like it would save some cash.
 
It is probably 30 feet or so from the compressor in the garage to the house, then another 30 feet once I get down the steps and to the workbench. The garage is unheated and in the winter it can get down to below zero deg F or -18deg C or lower in the winter, so I could see issues going from cold to colder to warm. Plus the dogs might think the air hose is a rubber snake chewtoy leading to other issues.

I'm not sure of the size of the air tank in the garage, smaller than your's though. Your compressor sounds big enough to handle air tools and sand blasting if needed. Mine though is loud enough to keep the neighbors awake at night.

It does seem like I'll be needing a moisture trap no matter what I end up with. Thanks for the reply, you've given me things to think about. I'm also now wondering about burying an airline underground and running that into the basement.
 
Yep, hubs uses it for air tools too. Ours is no where near that far away, but I've used it at -18, though usual winter temps it doesn't go much more than a few drgreesbelow freezing. I dont have dogs to worry about though lol. It is also louder than a jackhammer inside a tin can, inside an echo chamber, inside the bowels of hell, in the middle of a deamon spawned riot. But we made it a little house and soundproofed I a little. Now its just loud lol.
 
as squishy said the California air tools compressors are a pretty good value and pretty quiet.
I have the 1 hp 8gal and it is very quiet and small enough to be portable if needed.you can
work right next to these and not be annoyed.i've had mine for about a year now and still
works great.i got mine through home depot and shipped free to my house.
 
If I ever get time at home, some money, and a round tuit ;) I'm gonna experiment with changing the air filter on my compressor. I've heard that the right filter can cause significant reduction in noise, but I haven't had a chance to try it.
 
Well, I am/was set up for connecting to the garage compressor, got a moisture trap and second regulator and a couple quick releases so I can practice out in the garage. Tested it out a week or so ago and all seems good to go for now.

Then, tonight, I stopped at a local thrift shop on the way home and in the locked glass display case was an Iwata Smart Jet Pro box. I've learned that boxes do not always correctly show what is inside the box so I called someone over to get it out of the case and see what was in the box. We, sure enough, an Iwata compressor along with an Iwata siphon feed airbrush. I took it over to an outlet, plugged it in, and it seemed to work. So I bought it for less than an airbrush cost. As long as it checks out it should work well for indoors and for practice work.

Home now and have it out of the box. This is a package deal from Norvell Ambersun for spray tanning. The airbrush is an Iwata Revolution BCR and needs a thorough cleaning from the tanning solution. The airhose was broke in two so I monkey-rigged it back together by pulling the fitting from the short section of hose and reattaching it to the longer section of hose, it should hold long enough to get things checked out. The Iwata box shows an item number of IS-875 for the compressor.
 
The airbrush needle seems to be fairly well stuck so I'm going to have to figure out what to soak it in so I don't twist the needle off inside the nozzle or housing. I guess I'll start with looking up tanning solution and see what breaks it down. Looks like a trip to HobbyLobby or HomeDepot is on order for tomorrow at lunch.

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Nice score.... as far as the brush goes, here is the exploded view
upload_2017-5-18_11-17-48.png

can you remove #1 & #2 ? if so then try removing #14... you may then be able to remove #3 and the needle can rotate with the nozzle while you undo it.
99% Isopropyl is often used to clean spray tan equipment. You may be able to soak the nose of it, but will likely have rubber seals suffer

worse case scenario, new brush. they're only US$90 from Coast airbrush. But for the price you paid I'd be happy to buy a new brush. The compressor is worth US$300+ new.
just drain it, make sure it has chance to dry out make sure the moisture filter is clear.
 
1, 2, 12, 13, and 14 all came off fairly easy. I'll hit it with a bit of alcohol tomorrow and see what happens. Thanks for the help.
 
1, 2, 12, 13, and 14 all came off fairly easy. I'll hit it with a bit of alcohol tomorrow and see what happens. Thanks for the help.

does the bottle come off too ? if so you can try dripping some alcohol in the inlet with the nozzle end facing downward and try and get some inside.
Be careful when you soak it..... Ideally it should be nose down, but be very careful with the nozzle getting damaged. I don't know if the 'head' is removeable ? I don't have one to check it... the fact that it has a line on the diagram suggest it may just be a tooling mark, but some models have a rubber o-ring in there that will be destroyed by Isopropyl
 
The bottle is stuck, dried stuff on it's cap threads, so I'll start with getting the bottle off. Might just try running some warm tap water over it in the sink and seeing what happens.
 
This is exciting. I feel like I'm reading a good book waiting for the next chapter. lol


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I think I've got it cleaned out for the most part and functional again. I took it apart as far as I safely could, removed the cap screw opposite from the paint bottle, and also managed to carefully remove the nozzle with the nozzle wrench from my other brush. Then I dripped some airbrush cleaner into the paint hole and screw hole on the opposite side and used some cotton swaps to work the solution around in there. Then I noticed a little dirty solution come out of the tip area, yea! More solution and swapping and more was dripping slowly out but I still couldn't get the needle to budge.

Next I put the back end of the brush together again and snugged the snugger down to hold the needle (calling it a snugger because I don't have my reference paper handy with the proper terms, sorry). I then gently tried to pull the lever back but it slipped on the needed. I loosened things up to let things go back forward, then re-snugged again, but it slipped again when I gave the trigger a gentle tug. Not wanting to mess things up I stopped doing that.

More solution and swabbing in the paint area with more gunkyness dripping out, then I wondered what would happen if I gently tapped on the back end of the needle since the nozzle was off and theoretically the needle should pass through. So I put the back end together again (not the housing, just the inside parts) thinking those parts would help keep the needle from bending when I started tapping. I took a breath, then began lightly tapping the rear end of the needle with the side of the handle of my multi-tool. More cleaning stuff up front, then more light tapping and the needle started to move, yea!

I worked the needle out the front, cleaned it off, then carefully ran it through again and again and again until it came out clean. Then more solution and swapping in the paint area without the needle in there.

I then held the nozzle gently with some tweezers and used the tip of the needle with solution to work on the nozzle gently rotating and cycling the needle in and out of the nozzle. I then reassembled the airbrush completely and went to work on the paint container and got that as clean as I felt like for now.

I then hooked up the airline with the water trap and secondary regulator (I was doing all this out in the garage) and poured some straight cleaning solution into the container and started spraying that through the airbrush onto a paper towel until it seemed to run clean, all seemed to be working well.

I got a piece of printer paper and the opaque black Createx paint and dilution solution and poured some paint and solution into the paint container and mixed it up and attached it to the airbrush. I set the pressure at about 25psi and went to work on the printer paper to see if things were working, and they were, yippee!!!

This brush puts out a lot of paint compared to my -C brush. I tried some dots and some lines and then backed up and opened it up full to see how much paint it would spray. Not enough to paint a car, but looks like enough to do a motorcycle gas tank. I then flipped the paper over and tried some more lines and dots.

Content with the results for now I dumped out the paint container, mopped it out with some paper towel, then ran some straight cleaner through the brush until it ran clear. I'm going to have to watch a few of those DIY airbrush cleaner videos if I use this brush much.

100A9758-8591-45F1-8FFF-CA81CF1FEC9E_zpsslnraoba.jpg

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That got lengthy so adding a few more linked pics in a fresh posting
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0086EA28-CD58-441B-8035-00C51F9FA179_zpszopontqy.jpg


C77B1D8B-8B6B-4091-89C9-ADB261F874C5_zpszouev8fk.jpg


In the last pic I tried to capture the spray pattern as the cleaner was flowing clean.

So all in all I'm happy. Now I just need to learn how to use everything.

I did pick up a couple of drawing lesson books and got a new sketch pad today so I can better develope my drawing skills. Too many years using CAD software on the computer have left me very rusty.

Edit to add: will any push-in airbrush paint containers work with this brush? I think I want to get a couple if HobbyLobby has any that will fit, otherwise I'll order a couple off the web someplace. And in the mean time I think I'll do my practicing with the HP-C airbrush since it is easier to clean and uses less paint and cleaner.

Edit 2: some typos but too late to fix them, blame it on my phone browser keypad and my gunky-tanned thumbs. ;)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
That got lengthy so adding a few more linked pics in a fresh posting
07CFC359-51B5-41DF-821E-F934D8C23998_zpswpy6ckfv.jpg

0086EA28-CD58-441B-8035-00C51F9FA179_zpszopontqy.jpg


C77B1D8B-8B6B-4091-89C9-ADB261F874C5_zpszouev8fk.jpg


In the last pic I tried to capture the spray pattern as the cleaner was flowing clean.

So all in all I'm happy. Now I just need to learn how to use everything.

I did pick up a couple of drawing lesson books and got a new sketch pad today so I can better develope my drawing skills. Too many years using CAD software on the computer have left me very rusty.

Edit to add: will any push-in airbrush paint containers work with this brush? I think I want to get a couple if HobbyLobby has any that will fit, otherwise I'll order a couple off the web someplace. And in the mean time I think I'll do my practicing with the HP-C airbrush since it is easier to clean and uses less paint and cleaner.

Edit 2: some typos but too late to fix them, blame it on my phone browser keypad and my gunky-tanned thumbs. ;)
Nice job! I bet seeing that spray made all that hard work feel great!

Either one of these two top ones should work if I'm not mistaken. They are Iwata branded. I like them a lot and use them on my Paasche VL
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Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
a) don't worry about the typos' i'll often jump in and edit spelling mistakes if I think it makes things a little clearer, if people can work out what youre trying to say i'll leave it as is :D

b) good job on the cleaner, well worth the effort by the look of it. Patience and persistence for the win :thumbsup:

c) as per Andreza suggestion above, get hold of some Createx Restorer, you wont regret it. Its stronger than the Cleaner you have. Its reusable so its cost effective and its what its designed for exactly your issue. Its always good to have on hand, I keep some in a little plastic 'condiment' container with a tight fitting lid, just for soaking nozzles/aircaps in. brings them up a treat, a quick poke with a long bristle hairy brush and they're as clean as a whistle

if you're getting the bottles from hobby lobby just ask them if they'll test fit it to a BCR if they have one in stock so you know they will fit if they're not branded iwata.
 
Edit to add: will any push-in airbrush paint containers work with this brush? I think I want to get a couple if HobbyLobby has any that will fit, otherwise I'll order a couple off the web someplace. And in the mean time I think I'll do my practicing with the HP-C airbrush since it is easier to clean and uses less paint and cleaner.

You can get the cups from Badger, Paasche, and Harder & Steenbeck.
https://avwairbrushworks.wordpress.com/2017/01/13/harder-and-steenbeck-siphon-cup/
 
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