Fill Stations

Back in my pro-shop days, we hosted "outlaw" events in the mid-hudson valley of NY. We offered both CO2 and HPA fills at the game, and we had players that brought their own fill stations as well. One of them had theirs set up the exact same way you're talking about, with the cylinder mounted on a rack upside-down. His was perfectly vertical instead of 45* and he basically used some come-along straps to strap it into the frame. It works OK but was a bit awkward to use. Honestly, a siphon-tube cylinder shouldn't be much more expensive. The other option would be to rent a syphon-tubed equipped cylinder in the size you need from Airgas or Robert's Oxygen and charge people for fills to cover the cost. That way you can use a standard fill-station.

With the upside-down apparatus, it's more difficult to get it high enough off the ground to both hang a scale for tare weight and fill weight, and to operate the valve on the less expensive stations.

If you want to do it right the first time, I'd go with the siphon setup and a good fill station (expect to pay around $70 new) which has a blow-off valve to keep the tank o-rings from going bad.

Gigglez wrote: Thanks a lot for the info. I was going to buy a re-hydro'd tank from the local fire safety supplier, the problem was that finding a 20# tank with a siphon tube is next to impossible. Guess it boils down to getting a cylinder from amazon.

Have you checked with your local gas supply companies? I've seen 20# siphon tanks from Roberts Oxygen before.

Gigglez wrote: I haven't, I didn't realize that the oxygen companies used siphon tubes I thought it was fairly rare, but I actually have a couple buddies that work in that field I'm going to contact.

Yeah, they're actually the ones who supply most paintball pro shops. When I worked at a pro shop, we simply rented our tanks from the supplier. They'd just rotate them out as they were empty and delivered new ones. We used both 20 and 70 pound CO2 and 6kpsi N2 tanks on a cascade.

Use the tanks with the siphon tubes.  I am familiar with using standard 20# tanks upside down and it is not worth the hassle.  You can't weight the tanks as you fill them.  It will cost you more in lost cow and burst discs than the cost of the siphon tube.