[patienthand]

Coming from the neon background, forced air and gas torches are nothing new. I made my first beads in a 7 point crossfire. A 7 point crossfire is also what I learned my soft glass blown work on. Back in the day when I was doing production work, I would bleed a little oxy into my lines to make my flame hotter and speed my melt times. I used forced air, not compressed air. I needed a high volume at a low pressure, not high pressure at a ,low volume like compressors. A compressor could not keep up with what I needed and keep a steady pressure. For my neon shop I used a spa blower, or a whole house vacuum motor, run backwards with a holding tank and a relief valve. That way I wasnt putting a lot of back pressure on my motor. I replaced my brushes in the whole house vacuum motor every 4 months or so. thats running 10 hours a day or more( this will run a 3 man neon shop). For a small home system for a single torch set up, I used a kirby run backwards, and a holding tank set up and relief valve. The holding tank actually was not to hold a volume of air in reserve, it was to reduce the flutter in the air flow direct from the source. I had a "dog house" outside of my work space to reduce the noise in the shop and protect it all from the weather. My relief valve was home made with basic PVC pipe fittings and large washers were used as weights to adjust the pressure. I used one of those red tanks you get at home depot to store compressed air in,my husband uses one to fill car tires and beach toys, blow off something etc etc, they are not expensive.