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Budget air compressor. This whole thing cost no more than $200. I picked up the compressor head for free (along with a VW engine) from a guy in Southern CT whose wife was pissed at him. The CH 70 gal. tank I found in the BargainNews for $70. The pressure switch is a generic SqaureD that came from Graybar Electric in Hartford. The motor came from China via HarborFreight for about $60. The rest of it came from Home Despot. I also received the hoses and an air gun from the dude for free. The copper tubing is that flexible refrigerator tubing you can get at HD. It made it much easier to deal with bending it around the head. It actually appears that the head was designed to be on the other side of the platform but this platform already had mounting holes for the motor on the left side. I recall having to fool with the size of the pulley on the motor (obtained from McMaster-Carr). The original one was too large and I kept blowing the circuit fuse. Going to a smaller pulley fixed the problem because the electric motor would be outputting less torque (filling the tank slower), but not heating up as much because it could spin faster and cool itself quicker.
I have no idea how old this thing is, but here's a closeup. It's apparently made by Curtis Manufacturing, whoever that is (was). I should probably figure out if I really run it above 400RPM...
I'll take a less blurry pic sometime soon. But, for now, here's the switch inards.
