A massive amount of power is lost in air tools. They're also painfully loud, the hose is annoying in a variety of ways, and the air system in the shop is expensive to install and involves periodic maintenance.
Most mechanics use battery tools these days. Impact drivers for all but the biggest stuff, with handheld drivers having enough torque to work on a lot of suspension components easily, and there are even electric ratchet drivers now with sufficient torque for a lot of smaller stuff under the hood that require little more space than a hand ratchet, and no room for swing needed.
Battery tools are faster, quieter, easier to control. The system scales linearly in capacity, charging speed, etc. Add two mechanics to your shop where you're only using air? You're looking at thousands of dollars to upgrade a compressor, maybe a tank too.
If you're concerned about still being a mechanic when you lose power, put a solar panel on the roof, attach it to a MPPT solar charger and a couple of car batteries you recycle from customers' cars, and have an inverter ready to switch on if you need it.
What mechanic has the energy to pedal this thing just to work? What mechanic does so little work with their tools that the system can be infrequently refilled by a guy taking an hour or more to fill the tank?
This is at best useful for a shadetree mechanic and the article is fetishizing low-tech BS with no practicality. Replacing a 7hp compressor that was chewing up his electric bill...with something he pedals? If it was chewing up his electric bill, then there's no way he could replace it by pedaling.
I mostly agree, but the first part is not universally true.
My 30cfm compressor is 45db. Basically noiseless. You can easily have a normal conversation with it running. The air itself makes more noise than the compressor. It is happy with any duty cycle from 0-100%. Maintenance interval is about every 5 years. It produces oil free air. I can use it for breathing air (spray finishing) and not worry about things as much (I have proper gas sensors on that part anyway but it's nice to know i won't get poisoned by oil in some fashion)
I pay for this in efficiency. A oil sealed rotary screw would be about 30% more efficient (maybe a little more) but have some carry over and be about 65db. Not hugely noisy but still.
My pneumatic sanders have much lower vibration (30-40%), are quieter, smaller, weigh a lot less, and are essentially maintenance free. They can be repaired easily if I ever need to because they are very simple devices. The mechanism lends itself well to really good dust collection.
As a result They are much nicer to use than even the nicest electric festool and mirka sanders (I have both). The electrics are massively improved over two decades ago but still.
I don't woodwork or metalwork without mask or ear protection at all times so even if they were noisier I'd be fine.
The air drops are set up to be convenient from anywhere in the shop.
All that said, I do agree with the rest and the main point- for most people, battery is a better bet. I use what I do for convenience and comfort, not for cost or effectiveness.
There are times using air is just a better way of doing that than batteries.
I was referring to the tools themselves being loud. It's not common for mechanics to be wearing ear protection, and air ratchets and impact guns are VERY loud.
Air tools are not maintenance free. They all require oiling devices inline, or regularly being oiled, and that oil gets into the shop and coats everything; you're also breathing that shit into your lungs. That's why in a lot of mechanic's shops, everything is greasy. Pneumatic tool oil.
You can buy a lot of batteries, tools, and chargers for the cost of installing a hard line air system. That still doesn't address the annoyance of the air hose, which is even worse than electrical cords - less flexible and heavier.
Hardline air system is ... not a significant cost?
You make it sound like it's 10k.
Most shops are using a couple hundred feet of 1" copper, which has gone up in price but it's not that expensive. It would have been wildly cheap a decade ago (6 bucks a stick vs 20)
200ft of 1" copper is, at shitty prices, 200-250 bucks. Fittings for drops another 100 or whatever.
Time to solder it is annoying for sure, but you could press it if you want.
You could also go aluminum pipe systems, etc.
I've spent way more on battery based festool sanders (500-600 a piece) and drill/drivers than i did on hardline for the shop. The pneumatic tools were much less expensive as well. So i definitely disagree there.
Oil gets everywhere in anything working on metal, no matter what. I don't think that is avoidable - it definitely isn't fixed in any way by battery tools. I don't know a mechanic shop of any sort, battery or air based, that isn't a greasy oily mess. Battery tools require maintenance too. Heck, lots of mine want to be oiled regularly which is annoying without in-line oilers.
Your hate of air cords is more than mine - they seem equally as annoying as electrical cords. I can easily make well organized ceiling drops of electrical or air that keeps them out of the way.
If your shop is just running cords all over the place (as plenty of small operations do), it's, at least for me, equally, annoying whether they are electrical or air.
I too had a hard time reading the article, with my own criticisms of what I'd do differently or details I wish they'd focus on. Replacing the need for electrical energy with the need for the chemical energy of food doesn't seem particularly great. An air compressor is still a technological device that relies on long supply chains, and keeping a few spare parts around doesn't count.
But I try not to be too knee-jerk critical! Because I am glad someone is doing the work of trying experiments to look at outside the local maximum of our current technology.
I'd think that an infrequently-used air compressor would be a fantastic place to use electricity from peak solar generation. That kind of thing seems closer to a sustainability local maximum than using human power.
I use both power sources, and have used a 3" electric impact on track jobs and it would get hot. Air tools don't get hot, which is great when it is repetitive wrenching.
