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:
“Man will never be enslaved by machinery if the man tending the machine be paid enough.”
—Karel Capek (1890–1938)
“In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“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)