Ok, not all that familiar with air tanks... Just curious.I've been using a DA sander I baught and after about 5 minutes, water starts comming from everywhere, gun fittings.etc.. It's been about 90degrees here.... My brother suggested a filter near tank before hose that will allow water to drip out before hose??? Is this the answer... I'm planing to paint a car in about 3 weeks.. I'm guessing the DA makes the compresser run constantly to keep up.. A paint gun shouldn't be near as bad should it.. I just don't wanna spray the car with water in the paint.... I do have a disposable orange filter near gun ???? any thoughts or answers.. David
There should be a drain somewhere on the compressor to drain the water from the tank, Do that first, and i'd also use an inline filter while painting just to catch anything else that may come out. better safe than sorry.
The tank should be drained regularly due to water condensing from the compressed air. Water traps and gun filters will take care of moisture and oil vapor that can ruin your paint job. Good general info here: http://www.diy-compressors.com/choosing.htm Devon
We have the same problem a work with the compressors use on printing presses. Keep the tank drained and install as large of a water trap as you can find. An oil mister can help as well to help purge water out of the tools.
After you install the water and oil traps if you really want to get crazy you can install a dehydrater to completely dry the compressed air. It is basically a dehumidifier for the air coming out of you compressor. I use them on all the pneumatic controlled chillers and chill water systems in large A/C applications. Any moisture or oil or dust clogs up the orfice in some of these things because they are many times smaller than jets in carbs. Johnstone supply or Grainger sells them (expensive). Mikey
Often times if you have a short line from the compressor, when it's running a lot, the hot air from the compressor tank condenses in the air line. A long run of piping will help, but when that's impractical you will need to chill the air BEFORE it hits the water filter. Hot air after the water filter will only condense at the spray gun, especially if you have an air leak at the gun. I used to have a furnace blower that pushed air through an old a/c condenser for when I used my blasting cabinet, before I had installed a long run of steel piping across my shop. Your compressor may get hot while you're painting, especially if it's a small one. Even my 5 HP used get hot by the time I was finishing up. Play it safe and have extra water filters on hand that screw onto the paint gun.....they are disposable, and not too expensive. If you get water in your paint that will really suck! uzzled: :shock: :af:
They run about $400, which is cheaper than stripping and repainting your car. This would put a stop to your moisture problems.
What matters is a number of things: >How many feet of METAL pipe you have between the compressor and the tool' >What kind/how many filters in same pipe system >Draining your tank won't do much to help...BY ALL MEANS DRAIN IT...but the water you are getting is from the new air being compressed, heated and then cooled off as it moves down the air lines. If you are painting a car then you are going to have to spend some $$ on filters and possibly something to cool down the air (so the moisture comes out of suspension/solution in the air and can get filtered). PCV Pipe and/or long rubber air hoses do nothing but act as an insulator...thus carrying the hot air closer to the "end of the line" where it finally cools some and the H20 comes out. Metal piping acts as a radiator of sorts, taking heat from the air stream and allowing the water to start condensing or coming out of the air stream....but still doesn't cool it down enough to be your sole source of cooling the air(and thus getting the water to fall out of solution). Run your compressor long enough and you can imagine the hot air from the compressor will soon heat up the piping also..thus negating a lot of the cooling effect or not allowing the temp to drop enough to start getting the water to seperate from the air stream. In effect, run long enough (as in spraying a car) the piping becomes an extension of all the hot equipment in line ahead of the piping (the compressor, the tank). Solutions: >Metal pipe system...but large enough so you don't restrict the air volume which is even more important when SPRAYING A CAR (vs running a DA etc). Y >Cooling system--I have heard of people running pipe to a large galvanized tub and inside the tub putting a bunch of coiled copper tubing (obviously of adequate thickness to handle the air pressure). Then they fill the tub with ice and water. Outside the tub you then put a fairly sizeable water seperator/ filter. From this you run pipe or hose to your equipment. >Filtering SystemLook at TPTools and their selection of MotorGuard filters/seperators...they have some seperators that automatically purge as they fill up I think..read the fine print. They also have one filter setup that uses a large toiletpaper size filtering element that might be useful. You don't want to run this filter right after the cooler. You want a water seperator FIRST, then a filter so the filter doesn't get overwhelmed by the water. >TP has a good schematic on running airlines(metal piping) that you may want to look at anyway. Again--first MAKE SURE YOUR COMPRESSOR CAN GENERATE ENOUGH V-O-L-U-M-E (ie CFM at whatever air pressure you are spraying at) to supply your air spray gun. You don't want to get two passes into spraying a hood and have the pressure/volume drop. HVLP guns take A LOT OF AIR VOLUME!!
