I just bought my first air compressor. The manual says to turn the regulator all the way down when you turn the compressor on and then to turn it up when you want to use the air but it doesn’t say how high.
If I want to fill my tires to 35psi, do I just set the regulator to 35? Or do I set it higher so the tires fill faster?
I set the regulator on my compressor when I got it, and I haven’t had any occasion to touch it since. It’s set to 120 PSI, and it’s been somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty years.
Unless your compressor is either especially precise or especially crap I think you can safely ignore that whole song and dance. In the exceedingly rare instances I do need a lower pressure output I have a dinky little inline regulator I just attach to the bottom of whatever tool I’m using, which is inevitably a spray gun. The impact gun, air chisel, needle scaler, die grinders, drills, air chucks, strafer, and golf ball cannon get the whole enchilada all the time.
I too have had mine set to 120PSI since I got it 10 years ago.
The only issue I’ve had was from the one time I forgot to depressurize when I was done and the water rusted the inside of the tank; took a few cycles to blast out the rusty gunge before things went back to normal.
I can’t even figure out why you’d want to mess with the output regulator. I guess not all compressors are built the same? Cheap diaphragm on the regulator that can’t take a bit of kick maybe? I know that can be an issue with gas regulators.
Some tools do have specific pressure requirements. You can try running an HVLP paint sprayer at the full 120 but you’re really not going to have a good time doing it. Low pressure is right there in the name, come to think of it.
If you’re using a nail gun with smaller nails you’ll probably need to wind down your pressure, too. If you’re using little brad nails and give them the full Monty you might find that they don’t remain in the workpiece but have rather affixed it to your bench instead.
Interestingly, both my paint gun and my brad nailer have a regulator on them. Although it seems to be more a simple pressure bleed valve than a regulator.