Compressed Air

Why does everyone consider this taboo? It's like $2 bucks to fill a 100ft^3, which gives you maybe 50 fills of a 20 oz. tank. All my friends say that it will only last for a few shots, but I obviously proved them wrong. I have a 9oz. tank, and it lasted for 3 games before the balls started to fall noticably short. Also, it's not like I fired a half dozen rounds a match; I used just short of two hoppers. I really don't see how CO2 would function dramatically better. Yes, CO2 is a slightly denser than air, which I guess gives it more of a "spring", and allow  some of your first shots to be a bit faster, but with that logic, CO2 would disperse faster than air.

ALSO, the idiots at my local shop are quite simply put, idiots. The man who owns it knows little-to-nothing (more of the latter) about the general pyshics of gas, simple pnumatics, and physical mechanics.

He learned that I was using "heathen" compressed air and freaked. He started almost-yelling (not loud enough but the tone was right) about how he'd never sell me anything again, and that I'm going to kill my self. No matter how many times I explain it to him, and how simple I make it, he just can not grasp the thought that the gas has NOTHING to do with the tank bursting; it's the PSI inside it. I told him something like this "look, I could fill it with 500PSI air and nothing would happen, but if I took 100,000 PSI of liquified **edited**, it would definately burst" and he still didn't get it. On my rig, I have a gauge, too, so I can check what PSI the paintball gas tank has. As long as you don't rip open that ball valve and hold it open like an idiot, you'll be fine. And even if you were to hold it open like that, you have to remember the burst disc. Worst case that would blow, and you'll have sore ears, but that's it.

"Why does everyone consider this taboo?"

As in what's your thoughts and opinions?

And I don't understand why you're such an asshole.

"...what if you don't look at the reg for one moment and you over fill?" You'd probably get a Darwin award for that.

You morons must not hear me; BURST DISCS. But I'm not that much of an idiot to open it entirely.

First of all, I don't know any methods of filling Compressed Air through a pin valve, only CO2. So I find it hard to believe you.

CO2 is gas. Air is gas. And while CO2 is somewhat denser than air, its not a big enough difference to effect the fill.Unless you think that air is so thin it'd leak out. Which isn't the case, because I doesn't.

Second, it's impossible to fill a CO2 tank to 100,000 psi because there's not a tank in the world that would hold that pressure just for the purpose of filling paintball tanks.

Did you actually read all that I wrote? Or do you just like to make accusations with half-knowledge? I said that no matter what you filled it with at that PSI (a la "liquified crap"), it'd blow. And actually, the tank would not blow. The burst disc would. And even if you had a steel burst-less disc, it wouldn't "blow up", at worst, the neck would crack and the valve would blow out and itd spew gas. I know of someone who did an experiement; he took aluminum SCUBA tanks and steel SCUBA tanks, both filled up, and shot them. He took a video of it, and guess what happened? The just leaked out. No big booms or anything. I knew the steel would do fine, but I must admit that the slight cracking in the aluminum tank did surprise me.

Save yourself some trouble and some pain and fill your CO2 tank with CO2. If you really want to use compressed air, buy an HPA tank. They run as low as $65 at Action Village.

I'm not going to waste my money. I have a brain, and I use it. When you think, you actually save a bunch of time and money. You should try it sometime.

I've filled and used tanks with compressed air hundreds of times, and I'm still here, with no problems at all.

Has anyone here heard of an "advanced mix card"? It's a little yellow card that you can show the shop keeper to prove you know what youre talking about. Of course my all-knowledgable shop keeper, who's the best in the land at pnumatics and all the like, never even HEARD of this kind of thing.

"I have never heard of the "Advanced Mix Card" and I have worked a paintball field/store for 2 and a half years, and have played for alot longer than that."

That's because to play paintball as an average or even above average person (knowledge-wise not "skill-wise" mind you), you don't need to know these things. There's a kid who works at my local shop who dropped out of my highschool last year. I'm glad that idiot doesn't work at a SCUBA shop.

And so you know, a lady was killed diving about 2 months ago because some idiot filled her tanks wrong. That idiot would compare to those of you who "just work there". They don't know how to do anything other then what they were specifically trained in. Thinking outside the box? Careful, they might get an aneurysm.

And lastly,

You've never heard of advanced gas-mix classes because you're into paintball. A paintball is much simpler than SCUBA equipment. Also, it need not be as precise.

Tec divers are the masters, bow down before their knowledge on these things, just as I do.