Understanding proper gas usage in regulator

[Bigbella]

Nope. It's exactly the same reg. The labeling is to meet EU regulations which require that any enriched oxygen mixture be used only with 02 clean equipment.

In the EU all nitrox tanks must use a completely different valve, it is like DIN but a little larger. If you look on the Apeks website you will see nitrox regs, those have the that different fitting for those valves.

Clearly, there are differences to the EU market, the M26 fitting as an example; haven't seen those rigs used here. . .

 

[Graeme Fraser]

In the EU all nitrox tanks must use a completely different valve, it is like DIN but a little larger. If you look on the Apeks website you will see nitrox regs, those have the that different fitting for those valves.

Which is confusing to everyone else as those nitrox regs have green second stages, which is typically only used on deco regs.

It's an over the top EU regulation which now requires an M26 valve fitting for cylinders with more than 22% oxygen. However, we all completely ignore this nonsense and just have our normal M25 cylinders (and regs for EANx 40+) O2 cleaned, which is perfectly safe and fit for purpose.

 

[Angelo Farina]

In reality here in Europe (or, at least, in Italy) I have never seen bottles or regulators equipped with the mandatory 26mm DIN connectors. Everyone use normal 25mm DIN connectors, or even old joke, both with air and, sometimes, with Nitrox.
The regulation is applied for bottles employed for industrial applications, divers did never comply to them.
It must also be said the for diving in the Mediterranean sea Nitrox did never really caught up, as most divers (like me) perceive Nitrox as a severe limitation to the maximum depth which can be reached. Hence recreational diving is usually done with air, up to maximum depth of 50m (which is the limit to which all we were certified in the past).
So just a small number of not-technical divers here use Nitrox, and face this problem of employing the same regulators with (possibly dirty) air and with Nitrox-32 or Nitrox-36.
Technical divers, instead, often use decompression mixture at 50% oxygen, which of course require greater care and dedicated regulators.
After the bad experience I had with a bottle of pure oxygen, for sure, I will service and clean carefully my regulator if I have plan to use it with Nitrox.
When I open them, I often find real garbage inside the first stage... OK, I usually service them every 5 years, perhaps if I had cleaned them more frequently there would be not so much dirtiness inside...

 

[halocline]

Yes and no. It depends upon how your Nitrox is mixed. .

Partial pressure blending requires that the tank is O2 clean, not the regulator. The regulator, which is what the OP asks about, doesn't care how the tank was filled. If the gas is less than 40% O2, there's no need for O2 cleaning the reg.

 

[Hatul]

I've used my reg with air and with Nitrox up to 36% and haven't exploded yet.