This Instructable will show you how to hook up the Crayola Airbrush to a workshop air compressor. I imaginge any air compressor would work fine, however its very important that you have a regulator to make this work! I have a 4 gallon, 150 psi max workshop air compressor that i used. It has a built in regulator which is nice.

My 4 year old son loves the air brush, however my arm would get extremely tired constantly pumping the tank. No i turn the compressor on, set the regulator and we have a marker airbrush that requires no pumping, and best of all no clean up afterwards.

Step 1: Parts and Tools You Will Need

1. Crayola Airbrush Kit

2. 5 Piece Inflator Kit

-available at Harbor Freight for $1.99 - Here

3. A brass 1/4 inch air hose quick connect

- available at Harbor Freight for $1

4. A roll of teflon tape

- available at Harbor Freight for $0.69 - here

5. Pliers - i used my craftsman robogrip and a generic set, any will work to tighten the fittings

6. A 5/8 wrench - this fits the brass fitting perfectly

Step 2: Prepping the Air Gun

The first thing you need to do is gut the plastic tubing on the airbrush kit. There is the pump which has the handle on it. Then a clear plastic tube runs out of the pump to the actual airbrush. Cut the tube close to the pump. You will not need the pump anymore. Set the airbrush off to the side. We will connect the tube to the brass tip last.

Step 3:

Take the brass inflation tip and put teflon tape on the threads. You only need to use enough teflon tape to go around the threads once.

Step 4: Connect the Adapter

Once your teflon tape is on, take the brass adapter and screw it in place. Screw it on as tight as you can with your hands then use your pliers. Get it as tight as you can with the pliers. Be careful not to scratch the brass though. Brass is a very soft metal so you when you are using the pliers to tighten it up make sure you are gripping them as tight as you can. Screw them together slowly and with regular force.

Step 5: Adapter to Coupler

Next we take the put teflon tape on the threads, same process as before. Just enough tape to cover the threads. Then screw on the brass coupler. Use the 5/8 wrench on the coupler. And tighten as much as possible. You want to make sure no air can leak through any of the brass fittings.

Step 6: Adding the Air Hose Quick Connect

All the same steps as before apply to this.

My air compressor has a 1/4 inch air supply hose, so i used a 1/4 inch quick connect. You need to figure out what kind of air supply hose you have on your compressor and use the appropriate quick connect.

Again, use the teflon tape on the threads. Then attatch the quick connect to the brass coupler.

Step 7: Connecting the Fittings to the Airbrush Hose.

This part is just a tiny bit tricky. The hose/rubber tube fits over the first section and a half of the brass inflator tip. You have to push it on and the work it down the tip as far as you can possibly get it. The farther down you can get the rubber hose, the better connection you will have. Less air leaks!

Step 8: Hook It Up and REGULATE!!

You have to have a regulator for this to work. After hooking mine up and experimenting a while i found that this set up works best with a working PSI between 5 and 25. I had to do a lot of tweaking to get the airbrush to atomize the ink out of the markers. If your air pressure is too high, then absolutely nothing at all happens. Im not entirely sure why. Its the same as if you have no air pressure at all. Zip zero zilch. NADA nothing. So you have to get the PSI just right. So experiment with your air compressor a while to find the perfeft PSI to make it work for you.

A lower PSI will give your ink a flow that is very coarse. Heavy droplets and widely spaced. When i got up to the 20 - 25 PSI range the ink flow was very fine. Very small ink drops very close together.

I hope you enjoy and i hope you have great fun!

P.S. this was my very first Instructable, so i hope it was easy enough to understand.