Pneumatic tools or air tools are tools driven by gas, usually compressed air supplied by a gas compressor. Pneumatic tools can also be driven by compressed carbon dioxide (CO2) stored in small cylinders allowing for portability. Pneumatic tools are commonly cheaper and safer to run and maintain than their electric power tool counterparts, as well as having a higher power to weight ratio, allowing a smaller, lighter tool to accomplish the same task.
Air tools were formerly unpopular in the DIY market, but are becoming increasingly popular, and have always been ubiquitous in industrial and manufacturing settings.
If you have access to a cut-away tool this is the time to get it, as looking at a diagram is not the same as looking at the real thing.
Firstly, you do not fire a nail with a hammer ¨C you drive it. The same applies to pneumatic fastening tools. You use them to drive fasteners.
The place of the hammer is taken by the driver/piston and the energy that comes from the movement of the hammer is replaced by the energy from the movement of the driver/piston. Instead of putting your hand into your pocket for the next fastener, it is fed in to the nose of the tool for you, either by a spring or by a piston.
There is nothing magic to pneumatic fastening tools. The trick lies in moving quantities of air from one part of the tool to another as quickly as possible. The four diagrams opposite show the position of the various components that make a tool work during the stages of driving a fastener.
- High pressure air is shown as blue.
- Areas which have no colour are at atmospheric pressure.
All tools work in more or less the same way, they either drive or clinch a fastener.
Some tools have a work contacting element that has to be pushed against the wood before the trigger can be actuated, but this does not change the way the air moves inside the tool.
There are slight changes for coil nailers; these tools use air from the bottom of the housing to move a feeder piston to engage the next nail, which is then returned by a return spring.
