Blown away
Another update to the mobile workshop, but one you might want to copy for your own business if you are a groomer or a horse clipper.
One feature of clipper blades and clippers is they usually come to me covered in hair. For servicing clippers or clipper blades I really need to remove this. One of the better ways todo this is to use a compressed air blower. At base this isn’t a problem as tucked in the corner of the fab shop there is a big 3kW air compressor which is used for running plasma cutters, air riveters, air drills etc. But it’s not really practical to take on the road as it’s about the same size as my small bench.
Other options are a parts washer or an ultrasonic cleaner. Both of which involve a big vat of liquid which aren’t overly suited to mobile use. So i’m pretty much forced down there road of an air compressor. You can get 12v air compressors but they are like an asthmatic hamster blowing down a straw.
After a visit to RG is art in Stonehaven who did some CNC plasma cutting for me I saw he had a nice little silent air compressor which had two motor units. A wee bit of research let me discover they did a tiny single motor version. A deeper dive into the internet let me discover instead of a Hyundai labelled version there was a no name version on fleabay for about £100
I got mine about 2 months ago and stuffed it into the spare space in the big bench which had always been designed for a compressor. One thing to note is that it comes as a bare bones compressor with no extras or airline. Without these it is utterly useless so off to Tollstation in Montrose to buy the very cheapest of airline kits. The quality is fairly terrible but you get 5 tools and an airline for £25 so you can’t complain.
As it is only 600w it worked fine with my 1000W inverter, but when you start up the air compressors and then switch on the clipper blade machine, the clipper blade machines see’s a low voltage and throws an error message. So don’t do that. If you let the clipper blade machine get up to speed and THEN switch on the compressor it’s fine.
It is stupidly quiet in use and it has enough puff to clean up a couple of blades. I have also used it to blow up tyres both on the trailer as well as help someone out who had a flat tyre at a sharpening event.
Would I recommend one of these to fellow sharpeners?
YEP its seems to be an utterly excellent wee machine and it takes not much current
Would I recommend one to a groomer
MAYBE. If you are a small operation with not many dogs a day then probably not. A larger operation with quite a few dogs a day and you are taking time to clean up then maybe as well as using it for cleaning out clipper blades it’s a quick way to clean out your clippers as well as filters on dryers etc. As it’s quite a portable unit then you can use it for things like blowing up car tyres and cleaning out hoover filters.
Would I recommend one to a livery.
PROBABLY. Not only are horse clippers and blades worse for gathering hair then dogs but you’ll also have more stuff needing compressed air as you’ll have trailers, wheel barrows etc and this would be ideal for that.