pic: Compressor Backpack

[evanperryg]

It's really, really cool in concept. Pretty much anything turned into a backpack is pretty awesome, and you've obviously made something that serves a very good purpose. I agree, though, about the safety problem. Nobody can stop you from using it in your shop, but i'd suggest using metal air tanks for something like this.

[Rosiebotboss]

I agree with Jon.

At LRI training at HQ in early Jan, one of our fellow CMP LRI who works at an Army Testing Lab hired an intern to test the most common plastic tanks available to FIRST teams. The results for the black Clippard tanks was good. The white Clippard tanks (See the Manual for the exact p/n) were ruled illegal after several failures during the season and the resultant testing this summer at the Army Lab. And if I remember right, the performance deteriorated when damaged, nicked or abused, even slightly.

Kudos for thinking outside the box, but you won't see one being used on my team or at my event. Period. End of story.

[Nyle]

Not all white plastic air tanks are the clippard ones
If I'm not mistaken, the air tanks in the picture are, in fact, from pneuaire, not clippard. Not that that makes it a good idea.

[Dale]

(deleted)

[GeeTwo]

If the goal is to have a way to charge the tank for practice, it would be much simpler to use a single A/C air compressor than four or more 12V ones.

• Include a tee somewhere in your high-pressure side, just on the tank side of the pressure relief valve so that relief valve will function as a safety.
• For competition, the third branch of the tee will be capped with a solid plug.
• For practice, replace the solid plug with a vent plug, with a quick disconnect on the open end. Keep this vent plug closed except when externally charging.
• To do an external charge:
  • attach the external compressor at the quick disconnect
  • open the extra vent plug
  • turn on the compressor
  • When you reach the desired pressure (or the relief valve vents), turn off the compressor
  • close the extra vent plug
  • disconnect the quick disconnect fitting