Machinery
Modern diving compressors are three- or four-stage-reciprocating air compressors that are lubricated with high-grade compressor oil (a few use ceramic-lined cylinders with O-rings, not piston rings, requiring no lubrication). Oil-lubricated compressor operators must only use lubricants specified by the compressor's manufacturer. Special filters are used to clean the air of any residual oil (see "Air purity").
The compression process helps remove water from the gas, making it dry, which is good for reducing rust in diving cylinders and freezing of diving regulators, but causes dehydration, a factor in decompression sickness, in divers who breathe the gas.
Read more about this topic: Diving Air Compressor
Famous quotes containing the word machinery:
“Every Age has its own peculiar faith.... Any attempt to translate into facts the mission of one Age with the machinery of another, can only end in an indefinite series of abortive efforts. Defeated by the utter want of proportion between the means and the end, such attempts might produce martyrs, but never lead to victory.”
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872)
“There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been “Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself,” while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have any chance to look out for themselves.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)