Scuba Tanks

ditpaintball

Hi guys,
Im not a diver, im a paintballer, but we have the same needs, HPA or high pressure air. I am woundering if any body can tell me a little about scuba tanks, types, sizes, prices etc and i am thinking of gething a second hand one to use to fill up my 68cubic inch 4500psi tank. Its about 207 bar i think, dam imperial system. Any info would would be great, thanks.

Benny-c

Forget imperial measurements, they're obsolete:D

The majority of Scuba cylinders for recreational divers in Ireland (I assume is also the case elsewhere) are 232bar but 300bar are also available (with special regs.). 10L or 12L seems to be the most common , I dont know how you'd fit the cylinder to your system though.

A brand new 232bar 12L is approx 230-250 euros.

Hope this helps.

Benny

seadeuce

You say your little tank is 4,500psi, then say it's 207 bar. Not so.

4,500psi would be the equivalent of 300bar. 1 bar = 14.7psi.

Advise you to get a 232bar bottle, either 10/12/15 litre. Enough air there to do you for a year I'd bet?

Second hand bottles still need to be "in test" with a VIP sticker on them for filling. I believe that a VIP test (Visual Inspection Programme) is needed every two years, with a Hydrostatic test every four years.

A cheap bottle might seem attractive, but it may well fail a test and be cut up for scrap. Any self-respecting compressor operator won't fill your bottle without its being in test.

Seadeuce

Paddy Diver

All above points are excellent but is it a small cylinder that you attach to the paint gun your looking for?? or just a big (10 or 12l) cylinder to decant from to fill your little one for the gun??

If its for your paint ball gun then you'll (probally) be looking at a 2 or 3 litre Aluminium cylinder, although i think the valve will be a problem for you.

ditpaintball

Ya the imperial system is crap, ,but all the gear is made in america so we have to do with it.

Just to clear it all up. The small air tanks are attached onto the paintball gun 68cubic inches in @ 3000/4500psi.

http://www.xtremez.com/paintball/product_list.asp?dept=86&last=86

you can get about 300 to 4000 shots out of this size of tank before you need to refil. My plan was to get a scuba tank, which is bigger and then refill my gun tank from the scuba tank. For this i need a fill station.

http://www.xtremez.com/paintball/product_information.asp?number=FSFSN22&variation=&aitem=&mitem=&back=yes&dept=109

So i mite get about 5/6 small fills from one big scuba fill if you know what i mean.

Im just not sure is the threads on all the tanks will work out or will i need adaptors etc.

Hope this clears up my situation a bit better.

The other option i could use is C02. Less espensive to get set up but not a good as using air.


Cheers

Paddy Diver

Maybe you should look into getting a 'J' cylinder of Air from BOC. I know its big but you'd have mountains of air and it'd cost vey little every year.

A 'J' filled to 200bar would have about 100,000 litres of air, alot of splattered paint for that!!

baptiste

Ditpaintball, you won't need any other adaptors than the scuba fill station
to fill your tank.
With your Tippman A-5 the scuba tank will last really long if youre the only
one using it. To give you an idea we used to play at least one complete day
with 8 markers ( same kind as yours ) and a 15L 230 bars tank, we were using 800-1000 paintballs per person. And there were still some air left after that. The only thing is at the end there is not enough pressure in the scuba tank,some markers needs at least 800 psi to work properly. At the beggining you fill your gun at 3000 psi and around 800 psi youll need to fill it again.
But of course it depends on the type of marker, high end marker use a lot more air, and most of the time you shoot a lot more with these kinda of markers since the rate of fire is a lot higher.
If I start playing here in Ireland with my own stuff then I will definitely buy
a scuba tank.
Does anyone know where I can find a scuba tank in Dublin, where to refill it and the price ?

Baptiste

seisure

Im pretty sure you can get scuba tanks in the Great Outdoors and Ive been told they fiill them for a €5.