Hi Kong,
You're talking yourself into it, I see
I know what that is like: first the search, then shock sets in, refusal, reluctant acceptance, then grit your teeth and write the cheque
http://www.tricomfg.com/store/ProdLi...g=MetalCutting
1.7 CFM for the Trico air consumption. I think you should be able to find a reasonably small compressor that can handle that volume. Maybe get one that can compress 5 or 10 CFM, so you have a bit of reserve.
The Trico unit is very quiet, you will not hear it when your machine is running.
I've poked around inside one of these Trico units, and there really isn't a heck of a lot to it. The main feature is the nozzle design: it has a siphon tube (about 3 feet of 1/16" to 3/32 vinyl tubing) feeding oil to a special brass fitting in the nozzle, and the air simply flows through a Loc-line adjustable coolant pipe, with this special brass fitting pressed into the end. When the air flows past the nozzle, it siphons the oil out. The rest of the thing is just an oil reservoir and air on-off valve. I haven't really looked closely, but the oil reservoir is sealed and pressurized to some degree. There is no visible regulator on the unit, perhaps a restrictor in the on/off valve invisibly cuts the pressure to the system. It doesn't seem like a 90 psi air blast coming out of it, even though that is the shop pressure I am feeding in.
Perhaps the air feed is through the top of the oil resevoir, then out the line to the work. A bit of pressure in the reservoir might be required help force the oil down that tiny supply tube. If you were to try to home build something, you could perhaps purchase just the nozzles and experiment from there.
Note: you can also purchase these units with a solenoid that you can interface to your cnc. This will require an intermediate relay, controlled by your available computer I/O. If you want to flick it on manually, then just save the money and do that. Its not likely that you would need to cycle the thing extensively anyways. If you had a automatic toolchanger, then cnc control would be nice.
The Vortex unit, I suspect will have a significantly higher air consumption, and be noisy as hell. I am not sure if there is a fine tuning to the air flow on that, because they are trying to make cold air with it, so it wastes a lot of air doing that.