Victory! The big nasty constant leak is fixed. It took an o-ring inside one of the unloader actuators and some creativity with bike inner tubes. More permanent diaphragms will be made Wednesday night since the current setup is a band-aid fix over the old crappy ones.

I also made a wiki page with info on the machine and project progress:
http://tcmaker.org/wiki/doku.php?id=fac ... compressor

I'd like to work on plumbing the shop, and will put in a strong vote for PEX. Where can you buy PEX tubing and fittings for a reasonable rate? Can you just get that stuff at Home Depot, etc. these days? And does anyone here own a PEX crimper, or di I need to make one?

HD, MENARDS, LOWES all has Pex, manifolds, crimpers etc. I think we just need to make sure we do not pump the pressure to high for the weakest link.

I may have a Crimper that I can borrow long term (and loan to the HF for the project) my buddy ran a couple lines to his garage this summer, and I am sure he will not use the crimper any time soon.

I will post a update after talking to him.

I was at HD getting parts for a sillcock replacement, and scoped out the PEX stuff. A 100' roll of 1/2" was like $25, so I went for it. I've got a handful of tees, some caps, a bag of copper crimp rings. No thread adapters yet; HD only had ones with disproportionately large threading; I'm going to check at Park Supply.

I've got barstock on hand that will make a nice quick-and-dirty crimper if nobody can scare one up. I found specs on crimp tolerances here:
http://www.viega.net/xbcr/en-us/Viega_P ... ttings.pdf

I'll pitch in for a PEX crimp-er tool if no one else does. I think PEX is the way to go, that and I want a better drop for the Plasma cutter.

Thanks Karl!

-David