Floating air tables with quiet compressors

I used to float tables with tanks. They didn’t need to be changed very often, but it did need to occur, and it was a pain. I’ve used house air before, and house nitrogen, but they were dirty and/or unreliable.

We’ve been using compressors in recent years, and in particular these compressors from Newport (hat tip to J. Stirman). I was just buying some oil for them now and sourced some from Amazon. Searching on Amazon is a big mess these days, because there is so much crap to wade through. But sometimes the broad offerings turn out to be handy and I find interesting stuff that I otherwise might not have.

If you know me, you know that I don’t like noise. I try to make my lab space quiet. I use sound dampening cabinets for noisy water chillers, laser components, and other parts with noisy fans. I like to seal off resonant mirrors (makes a huge difference). I have had unused blowers shut down by Facilities Management to lower noise. Similarly, I don’t like air compressor noise. The Newport ones are pretty quiet, 30 dB. I approve. Thorlabs sells a compressor too, but it’s louder– 50 dB (larger tank capacity, to be fair— in case you need that). I’m quiet fond of the Newport compressors. They’re quiet and they do the job reliably.

Air brush artists use compressors too, and at least some of them share my love of quiet equipment. I found this compressor on Amazon for that crowd. 30 decibels, and roughly the same pressure range. It’s cheaper than the Newport ones.