Nice setup although I remember that the efficiency of air tools is very low like around 1%. That’s also why they get replaced a lot.
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.
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.
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 guess we will just disagree.
I'm using scroll compressors, which are very quiet. Smaller versions are used in your HVAC system (assuming you have one).
Even basic ones are 49-50db. https://www.powerexinc.com/industrial/air/enclosed-scroll-sy... You can do better.
Most people's experience is with piston based reciprocating compressors, which are quite loud. 80+db.
Or little pancake compressors, which are the same.
Most shops move towards rotary screw because they need higher cfm than even 2 stage reciprocating can provide.
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.
Seeing as you need exercise anyway to stay healthy, it might as well be doing something useful.