On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 9:26 AM, Jeff Scarbrough <fishplate@gmail.com> wrote:
> Corrosion Acres was originally named for the acres of rusting British
> cars...now I can add air compressors to the list...
>
> I always wondered how long my 40-year-old Craftsman air compressor
> tank would last, and how destructively catastrophic would the failure
> be? B Turns out to be 40 years, and not very.
>
> I went out to the shop this morning to inflate the bicycle
> tires...flipped on the compressor and after it shut off, I heard a
> loud hissing. B Wondering which of my poor fittings came loose, I
> crawled under the bench and discovered a pool of rusty water directly
> under the tank.
>
> So, I need a new compressor. B I'd like to get a two-stage, with
> enough CFM to run a sandblaster intermittently. B Any brand/model
> suggestions?
\\>
I won't make a suggestion about a new compressor, because things
change a lot, and I don't pay attention. But, if you've got the
space, and have generally been happy with the current compressor,
consider keeping it, alog with the new one. Depending on its size,
you can get a new tank, or you can plumb the two compressors to a
single tank. (You need to make sure that the air from one compressor
doesn't flow through the other, check valves can do that.) If you're
really clever, you can wire the pressure switches so that the smaller
compressor does the work most of the time and the bigger one only
comes on when the load exceeds the smaller's capacity. (This is
pretty standard industrial compressed air practice.)
Of course, if you've spent the last decade plotting ways to blow the
noisy piece of machinery straight into the next county, maybe tis
isn't the right path.
--
David Scheidt
dmscheidt@gmail.com
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