Thanks for posting this Jeremy!
It's made me evaluate why I maintain and tolerate the noise, mess, footprint of a big compressor. I use it to power a nailgun (which is not very often!) for filling tires, HVLP gun use (very rarely) and general blowing/cleaning dust out of equipment and off me.
I saw re-fillable CO2 tanks for Paintball guns mentioned somewhere in the last month to power nail guns and thought that would be good if I did roofing or worked in some remote location but blew it off. Probably more expensive than a small compressor over the long run if you use it a lot but for someone needing sporadic, small volume compressed gas this may be an option. (gives you a great excuse to get into Paintball too!!!) Leaky nailguns were the big negative. Short hose runs (hooks to your belt), silent, very small, no extra 220 volt lines, totally clean and dry sound good to me!
Come to think of it, if you have a welding (or NASCAR) connection, large bottles of Nitogen may not be too much of a stretch. We use them in the hospital OR to power saws, drills, ratchets, etc. NASCAR teams fill their tires and run their impact wrenches off of them. Lot's of CFMs go through those things!
Forget about the big compressor and get a Rotex!
