LOL! Compressors don’t just suck they also blow! I know Jr High humor here.
So rebuilding senders means I am using my blast cabinet daily and for hours at a time some days. I noticed my old Black Max 6HP 60 gallon compressor was having a hard time keeping up. It used to cycle back off after a while even while I was using it. Now it doesn’t seem to catch up. THe 6HP rating is deceptive. There was bit of a HP war in compressors and the numbers were highly optimistic. Based on current consumption it was probably about 3.5 HP.
Ingersol Rand had a nice 3 HP 60 gallon compressor on sale at Home Depot. It was one sale and I had one of those 10% off coupons. It was only available as a ship to store or ship to home so I opted for ship to home. About 10 days later it showed up on a box truck with a tommy lift. The driver and I wrestled it off the truck and I noticed it looked like the belt guard was bent in although it was very heavily wrapped with thick plastic. I had the driver note the damage and take a few pictures. He left.
I moved it into the shop and discovered that the damage was far more severe than I thought. Not good. The shaft of the pump was bent so badly the large pulley almost scraped the tank. Ops. I emailed Ingersol Rand and called their customer service number and finally got a response: call this other number. After zero response I called Home Depot they said I needed to return it to the store. With the help of three other guys we were able to get it in my truck and the store took it back. But they would not exchange it at the sale price. In fact they charged me a few dollars for restocking fees, and refunded the rest. The new price was almost $300 more than what I paid.
So my second choice was a Dewalt at Tractor Supply. Thinking I had finally stuck it lucky, it was on sale. They loaded it in my truck with a fork lift and things looked good. It took a few days to line up my neighbors back hoe to lift the 300 lb beast out of my truck.
Dewalt has a 30 minute break in procedure, running the compressor with no load and it was very loud. I thought it had something to do with the huge wide open outlet and let it run for 30 minutes while I went else where.
The Dewalt has a very impressive 3/4" outlet, and I wanted to take advantage of it so I ordered a new filter regulator from Amazon. After installing it with 3 different versions of Teflon tape a two different versions of pipe dope it was still leaking air. So I bought the high dollar Permatex 545 that can seal air to water. One ounce is $25. So finally I go it sealed. Finally time to close the valve and let it pressure up. Still incredibly loud. Would it get quieter as it filled the tank? Actually, no. It got even louder. And it also was not able to keep up with the blast cabinet. In spite of a higher scfm rating it was performing even poorer than my worn out (and MUCH quieter) compressor.
Having been in the speaker business for the past several decades I have three different SPL meters. The spec for this compressor is 83 dBA. It created a peak of 101 dBA and a consistent 97.5 dBA of ear damaging noise. (Measured at 1 meter A weighed scale).
I removed the belt guard and ran just the motor and it was quiet at about 78dBA. That pointed to the pump.
So I called and emailed Dewalt thinking that the problem was obvious and they be willing to send a replacement pump. The engineer at Dewalt advised their very polite customer service lady that they could not use my SPL levels because they were not done in a controlled environment. First off I am certain that Dewalt lacks an anechoic chamber. Second near field measurements of SPL do not require one. Okay what now? They wanted me to ship the compressor back to them at my cost for evaluation. I think they may have confused this with a cordless drill.
So fortunately Tractor Supply will stand behind it and they are going to exchange it for a new one. Hopefully that won’t be defective. I just need to get the back hoe over here to do the heavy lifting.
Moral of the story if there is one. Be sure to check return policies on heavy tools and buy local.