What Compressed Air Gun Do You Use For Lenses And Film?

[chuckroast]

Relying on oil, water and dust filters in a compressor is playing with fire. Filters aren;t perfect even when you regularly maintain and replace them.

Which is why I don't use any kind of compressor, even oil-free ones and why I use a scuba tank and first stage regulator with an air nozzle at the end of the hose. That air is - of necessity, clean, filtered, and quite usable for all things photographic. I don't dive any more but my certifications remain in place so my local dive shops will fill/inspect my tank as required by the DOT.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Which is why I don't use any kind of compressor, even oil-free ones and why I use a scuba tank and first stage regulator with an air nozzle at the end of the hose. That air is - of necessity, clean, filtered, and quite usable for all things photographic. I don't dive any more but my certifications remain in place so my local dive shops will fill/inspect my tank as required by the DOT.

Air compressors used for scube alsom require air, water and oil filters. So how well the aiur is kept depends on the dive shop. I wonder if using CO2 tanks with pressure resducing regulator are better? How do they create CO2? Are these used for patients in hospitals?

 

[chuckroast]

Air compressors used for scube alsom require air, water and oil filters. So how well the aiur is kept depends on the dive shop. I wonder if using CO2 tanks with pressure resducing regulator are better? How do they create CO2? Are these used for patients in hospitals?

There is an entire air purification and monitoring system required for scuba fill stations. Any contaminants can be deadly at pressure.

For example, if you introduce CO2 into the tank, at at depth of 132 feet (the sport limit for diving on air), each breath you take injects 5 times as much CO2 as you would on the surface breathing from that tank. This can be very, very bad. So there are pretty strict requirements for filling these tanks.

Also scuba fill stations make sure the air is dry because moisture inside the tank can corrode it.

So, yeah, scuba air is as clean as it gets short of actually using laboratory air filtration systems like Class 100 clean rooms.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I have tried all kinds of things. But I've also had the seemingly unfair advantage of being outright given very high quality equipment as personal use samples in relation to my many years in equipment distribution. For example, certain compressors which became major national models were first prototyped right in our own shop. Someone earlier posted a picture of a Makita compressor which I was probably the first person in the US to actually test, although we didn't actually sell many of those. We did repair them, and all kinds of other compressors too.

A number of you are completely wrong about what goes into true pro level compressors and vacuums, or what constitutes cleanroom style line filtration. For example, the kind of vacuums I sold thousands of were EPA certified for hazmat abatement purposes. We even held the EPA user certificate licensing classes in relation to legal usage; and I sold the same kind of vacs to museums as well. These are all sealed system two stage vacs where the output air is so clean one could even use them as a cleanroom air purifier if they wanted to. They are also variable power for sake of delicate work, although I have a supplementary bleeder valve if needed.

Those handheld "museum vac" devices are overpriced toys by comparison.

If you recognize the sheer versatility of owning one of these vacs, for no more than the price of yet another fancy new lens you really don't need, then forking out the money for a serious vac isn't so intimidating. My wife likes to borrow my smaller unit for cleaning up the fine dust the regular vacs leave behind (or actually spread) in the house. I can even attach it to my equally high performance sanders, and sand drywall compound or old paint almost completely dustless, not to mention shop uses. Friends who have seen my shop wonder how it is so clean, even around the shaper table where I make my own picture frame mouldings.

So having a bigger unit centralized in my shop to handle the framing room, the woodworking and general shop area, and the inner darkrooms themselves, is just common sense. Same goes for how I arrange the compressors.

Therefore, except for periodic general cleanup, I keep those vacs in a different room from the darkroom or print mounting room itself, connected to ports in the walls. This allows for use of vacuum printing easels as well as cleaning issues while keeping even the very limited noise in a different room altogether. Same goes with compressors and hoses, even exhaust fans - they're all outside the darkroom per se.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Do people pressurize their darkrooms with fans and Hepa filters? Using exhaust fans would seem to pull into the darkrooms all the dust from other rooms.

 

[Dan Daniel]

Do people pressurize their darkrooms with fans and Hepa filters? Using exhaust fans would seem to pull into the darkrooms all the dust from other rooms.

That's your standard clean room ventilation approach, positive pressure- filter air and then push it into the room. Have exit vents, of course, but if there are any leaks in the walls or such, there will not be dust sucked in.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Effective ventilation is mandatory in any common sense darkroom or lab space. Some people divide their darkroom into a wet side and a dry side. I prefer a completely separate sink room versus cleanroom. All the enlargers are in clean dry areas.
The most crucial space has a commercial quality air cleaner in there, whereas the sink room has fume hoods and ducting to a large exterior squirrel-cage fan, plus light-tight air inlets on the exterior wall. Secondary air ducts remove colorhead heat from those spaces.

 

[Pieter12]

Do people pressurize their darkrooms with fans and Hepa filters? Using exhaust fans would seem to pull into the darkrooms all the dust from other rooms.

I find that if I keep dust off my negatives, dust in the room is not an issue. So negs are in sleeves and get cleaned once in the carrier.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Try working with multiple sheets of 8x10 film needing to be printed in registration.
That's a lot of susceptible film surface area and will make one acutely aware of any kind of dust or lint around. Whenever I need to do that kind of fussy color printing prep, I swab down every inch of the cleanroom in advance, and then only go in there wearing a true cleanroom Dacron smock.

I cut my teeth doing big Cibachrome prints, which was an infamously difficult medium to retouch. So working as clean as possible in advance was essential. Ordinary black and white printing is not as fussy.

In terms of cleaning film, my filtered compressed air gun passes the air over the film surface right into a big air purifying device which collects all those particulates rather than spreading them around. A high quality gooseneck halogen inspection light is right overhead, making every bit of dust or any kind of surface flaw highly evident.

 

[Bob Merlin]

I use a Paasche V airbrush. I can aim right at any dust on a negative. It gives better control than a can will.
Any airbrush will work if you have an air supply.