Thread: Buying a compressoer,looking for 'up right' one.help needed.

Originally Posted by hotspur

Hello.

I am looking to buy a compressor,I once saw one in a catalouge,where it was 'up right' on a trolley.
i.e instead of regular horizontal tank,this one was vertical,it looked so much easier to move around.

Not only that but that means it takes up a bit less room.

With compressors you basically get what you pay for.

Before we can give you detailed advice you need to let us know what you need it for. Do you have any air tools and if so what are they etc.

Originally Posted by BobL

Not only that but that means it takes up a bit less room.

With compressors you basically get what you pay for.

Before we can give you detailed advice you need to let us know what you need it for. Do you have any air tools and if so what are they etc.

Mainly blowing fine dust out of finished woodwork projects,cleaning,general maintenance jobs-filling tyres etc.Also want the vertical unit as easier to transport-which is a key factor-sick of hit my shins with the one I have here,when moving.

Yes-you are right,especially so with compressors-you get what you pay for.

Prepared to spend up to $600-$700 for a unit.Not wanting a cheap crappy 'auto barn' unit,so prepared to spend more..

Originally Posted by hotspur

Mainly blowing fine dust out of finished woodwork projects,cleaning,general maintenance jobs-filling tyres etc.Also want the vertical unit as easier to transport-which is a key factor-sick of hit my shins with the one I have here,when moving.
Yes-you are right,especially so with compressors-you get what you pay for.
Prepared to spend up to $600-$700 for a unit.Not wanting a cheap crappy 'auto barn' unit,so prepared to spend more..

I assume you want a single phase unit?

Before I bought my second hand 3 phase unit I was looking at the Pilot air range but I see they don't have a vertical unit in single phase, and their 3 phase verticals start at $2.5k.

Rather than move the compressor why not set up a couple of long air hoses?
My compressor is located outside in a weather and sound proof enclosure and I have reticulated air to 7 different points within the shed, plus one is a 20m long air hose about 2.1m above the centre of the shed floor.
Besides having compressed air at just about one arms length away in any point of the shed, there's much less noise and it doesn't take valuable shed space.

You might find a quality vertical tank unit hard to find. There are some in the basement brigade, Aldi had a small one direct drive earlier in the year, and they are fairly common in the heavy duty commercial/industrial arena but they are way out of your price range as new units. The larger commercial/industrial units are often split units, with motor and compressor separate from the receiver and floor mounted beside it. This is largely because the weight of the motor and compressor package, and the difficulty in isolating vibration etc once it it mounted at the top of the tank.

I suspect that they are rare in mid range units intended to be portable because the weight of the motor/compressor and frame elevated on a vertical tank of 50-100l would be very unstable and prone to overbalancing if wheeled around. I have a horizontal 3HP 100l belt drive unit in the conventional setup of a pair of pneumatic tires at the back end, and feet and a loop handle at the front (700mm away) with noisy bits centrally located. The whole thing sits with the bottom of the tank about 80mm above floor level and the loop handle probably at 700mm. I have to stoop to move it around as if I lift the front more 150mm, the centre of balance shifts enough to make it tip onto the back dome of the receiver and squash my feet. A similar sized unit as a vertical, would I suspect, have to have 3 or 4 legs with bolt down plates to ensure that it didn't fall over in operation, precluding portability.

The smaller units I have seen are based on a 'conventional' 2HP Chinese direct drive package and a vertical 30-50l receiver, overall similar to small car shop horizontals that you are trying to avoid but a smaller footprint. Another possible alternative would be the units with multiple small tanks rather than a single medium sized tank, but they use the same direct drive package compressors.

There are many smaller vertical models available in North America for use in basements, and in Europe where they also have basements and less room, but these don't seem available here.

thanks for all feed back.

Might just have to look for a regular shape one.

Any suggestions??

Sounds like there is a huge amount of rubbish units out there.

I do want to be able to transport this about.Not using at regular woodwork shed all the time.

Thanks

The cheaper ones are more of a gamble but for what you want to do it sounds like it's not going to be under HD use so they might work out for you.

I bought a $199 2.5HP 50L Trade Tools Bunnings special in 2002 and flogged the pants of that thing but couldn't kill it.
I used it for the sorts of things you refer to, pumping up SWMBO's fit ball, blowing down chainsaws and gear, pumping up tyres and a few other things.

Did use it for a while for a bit of spray painting but there was a lot of waiting around for it to recharge when using a standard spray gun so I bought a smaller (almost air brush size) and it was OK with that one given I was mainly spraying small stuff and I found there was a lot less wastage.
The other thing I used it with was a small die grinder but there too it ran out of air very quickly.
I finally mainly upgraded because I bought a plasma cutter and needed a bigger flow rate and so I gave the old unit to my son a few months back and it is still running.

In all that time I only changed the oil once and that was the day I gave it to my son. Every time I went to check the oil it looked full but that day I looked more closely at the oil level sight glass and it was not oil I was looking at but a sludge mark. When I drained the oil hardly any oil came out and what did was more like tar than oil.

Yep over the years there was some maintenance. things came loose, and there were half a dozen leaks that teflon tape quickly sorted - I'd recommend doing that routinely. The cooling fan came off multiple times so the would motor trip out from overheating till I provided extra grub screw on the fan collar. About a year ago it would not get above 90 PSI so it was not turning itself off and so it would overheat and trip. I thought this was the end of it but that turned out to be one of the aluminium foil head valves had disintegrated so I made new ones out of some thing al plate and it worked a charm.

The one thing I was fairly religious on was venting the tank and set up a retic solenoid on the vent valve so I could vent it without getting down on my hands and knees to do it.
Recently I bought a $30 auto vent valve (http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-2-2-way-Au...E:L:OC:AU:3160) I haven't installed it but they are supposed to automatically take care of water in the tank.

One thing worth knowing is, like most Dust extractors the air delivery rates quote by manufacturers are measured according to their standard which rarely matches reality.

The way to measure the air delivery rate is as follows
T) Time the recharge time in minutes (lets say it takes 1 minute)
P) Look at the pressure gauge as soon as the recharge starts and then when it stops, lets say it turns on at 85PSI and turns itself of at 120PSI (total increase of pressure = 45 PSI) and divide that by 15 to get atmospheres so in this case its 45/15 = 3
C) Convert the tank size into Cubic ft (divide the Litres by 28) lets say its a 56 L tank so that is 2 cubic ft

The air delivery rate is then (P x C)/T or in my example its 3 x 2/1 = 6 CFM
To be a 12 CFM compressor the recharge time for this compressor would have to be 30 seconds!

Originally Posted by BobL

The cheaper ones are more of a gamble but for what you want to do it sounds like it's not going to be under HD use so they might work out for you.

I bought a $199 2.5HP 50L Trade Tools Bunnings special in 2002 and flogged the pants of that thing but couldn't kill it.
I used it for the sorts of things you refer to, pumping up SWMBO's fit ball, blowing down chainsaws and gear, pumping up tyres and a few other things.

Did use it for a while for a bit of spray painting but there was a lot of waiting around for it to recharge when using a standard spray gun so I bought a smaller (almost air brush size) and it was OK with that one given I was mainly spraying small stuff and I found there was a lot less wastage.
The other thing I used it with was a small die grinder but there too it ran out of air very quickly.
I finally mainly upgraded because I bought a plasma cutter and needed a bigger flow rate and so I gave the old unit to my son a few months back and it is still running.

In all that time I only changed the oil once and that was the day I gave it to my son. Every time I went to check the oil it looked full but that day I looked more closely at the oil level sight glass and it was not oil I was looking at but a sludge mark. When I drained the oil hardly any oil came out and what did was more like tar than oil.

Yep over the years there was some maintenance. things came loose, and there were half a dozen leaks that teflon tape quickly sorted - I'd recommend doing that routinely. The cooling fan came off multiple times so the would motor trip out from overheating till I provided extra grub screw on the fan collar. About a year ago it would not get above 90 PSI so it was not turning itself off and so it would overheat and trip. I thought this was the end of it but that turned out to be one of the aluminium foil head valves had disintegrated so I made new ones out of some thing al plate and it worked a charm.

The one thing I was fairly religious on was venting the tank and set up a retic solenoid on the vent valve so I could vent it without getting down on my hands and knees to do it.
Recently I bought a $30 auto vent valve (http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-2-2-way-Au...E:L:OC:AU:3160) I haven't installed it but they are supposed to automatically take care of water in the tank.

One thing worth knowing is, like most Dust extractors the air delivery rates quote by manufacturers are measured according to their standard which rarely matches reality.

The way to measure the air delivery rate is as follows
T) Time the recharge time in minutes (lets say it takes 1 minute)
P) Look at the pressure gauge as soon as the recharge starts and then when it stops, lets say it turns on at 85PSI and turns itself of at 120PSI (total increase of pressure = 45 PSI) and divide that by 15 to get atmospheres so in this case its 45/15 = 3
C) Convert the tank size into Cubic ft (divide the Litres by 28) lets say its a 56 L tank so that is 2 cubic ft

The air delivery rate is then (P x C)/T or in my example its 3 x 2/1 = 6 CFM
To be a 12 CFM compressor the recharge time for this compressor would have to be 30 seconds!

Ta

One other factor to consider is noise. The oil-less compressors are very noisy, much more so than the belt drive two or three cylinder pumps. None of them are truly quiet but the oil-less units will rattle your fillings.

Originally Posted by rob streeper

One other factor to consider is noise. The oil-less compressors are very noisy, much more so than the belt drive two or three cylinder pumps. None of them are truly quiet but the oil-less units will rattle your fillings.

Thanks.

So what could people recommend here.That is some what half decent??

with a budget of $600-$700 ?

Or just buy cheap throw away one,for $200 every few years?? would like something
that could spray a bit of laquer occasionally.

thanks

Bought son one from big green shed 12 mths ago, spear and Jackson, it has since been replaced with a conventional type due to continual problems with oil leaks.
just our experience for what it's worth.
Happy hunting

Originally Posted by hotspur

Thanks.

So what could people recommend here.That is some what half decent??

with a budget of $600-$700 ?

Or just buy cheap throw away one,for $200 every few years?? would like something
that could spray a bit of laquer occasionally.

thanks

Don't know the brands you have available but at this point I have two. The first is a Porter Cable oil-less similar to this; http://www.portercable.com/Products/...roductID=17019. Very reliable, ~ 5 cfm rated, easy to tote around and gets more use than the other compressor. It's cheap at ~$129-$99 on sale. It can handle about 30 seconds of use with a 1/2" impact gun but is virtually useless for spraying paint or running a die grinder and is LOUD!. The other compressor is this one; http://www.amazon.com/Gallon-Single-...l+Tank%2C+2+HP. Has about the same rated cfm capacity, weighs in at about 200 lb. and is top heavy. On the up-side it has no problem handling 10+ cfm demand air tools if they are used intermittently. More expensive but it is relatively quiet and has a good size reservoir to keep tools running. Easily capable of supplying spray guns, especially HVLP's.
So really it's a trade-off. Capacity and lower noise level with higher cost or more noise, lower cost and significantly less guts.

Originally Posted by rob streeper

Don't know the brands you have available but at this point I have two. The first is a Porter Cable oil-less similar to this; http://www.portercable.com/Products/...roductID=17019. Very reliable, ~ 5 cfm rated, easy to tote around and gets more use than the other compressor. It's cheap at ~$129-$99 on sale. It can handle about 30 seconds of use with a 1/2" impact gun but is virtually useless for spraying paint or running a die grinder and is LOUD!. The other compressor is this one; http://www.amazon.com/Gallon-Single-...l+Tank%2C+2+HP. Has about the same rated cfm capacity, weighs in at about 200 lb. and is top heavy. On the up-side it has no problem handling 10+ cfm demand air tools if they are used intermittently. More expensive but it is relatively quiet and has a good size reservoir to keep tools running. Easily capable of supplying spray guns, especially HVLP's.
So really it's a trade-off. Capacity and lower noise level with higher cost or more noise or lower cost, a lot more noise and significantly less guts.

The one in your second link,looks like the shape I am after,looks much easier to move around,this is a PRIME CONSIDERATION for my requirements.I can see issues with being 'top heavy' etc.But if the unit was positioned so it could be tied against a trailer/wall/bench etc etc.While on site,would cause less issues perhaps.

Is there any shops in S.E QLD that sell something like this.Not sure how Amazon sales work,I know I got books of them in past,but a compressor in mail.......

Thanks so much everyone for help

If you go with one having wheels try to get the foam filled tires or solid wheels. I had to fill mine with Slime (http://slime.com/) to keep them inflated. Kinda sucks having a 200 lb. compressor fall over because it has a flat tire.