Never Do This, and Other Good Ideas Gone Bad

[apalrd]

Originally Posted by TD912

We always were worrying about running low on air, even with the onboard compressor and 4 accumulator tanks.

Did you ever actually run low on air? Probably not.

We built some stuff this off-season that relied on pneumatics, and fully automated it (in C on an IFI processor). The automation was very rudimentary and would actuate a lot (if it was on the threshold it would switch very fast). We used a mini-pump (a tiny red air pump, similar to the one this year but with less output) and 1 tank, and set the tank pressure switch to about 100psi (the pump struggled to go past that). It ran fine, and we ran it hard. So hard that the pump eventually overheated and seized, and only then did we run out of air. When we put in the old pump, it ran fine indefinitely (well, until the battery died).