Road compressors

[bayzoo]

Hi,

I’m not in any position yet to consider one of these but they do look well suited for blasting, which I MIGHT want to do more of when I get a bigger place.

I have the following questions:

Are they very noisy? How do they compare to piston compressors?
Are they suitable to be run in residential areas or do the fumes/noise cause problems with neighbours?
What is the average diesel consumption?
I see a lot of Atlas Copco for sale, with the old ones around the £2k mark; I’m guessing these could be a time-bomb in terms of up coming costly repairs?
Am I raving mad and should never think of this again as I’m risking divorce?

Im also bearing in mind the cost of diesel and the worlds view on ICE’s.

Thanks all.

 

[awemawson]

I've run a 'two tool' road compressor for grit blasting for some years now - only gets used occasionally with my Hodge Clemco

A/ Are they very noisy? - Yes mine is but so is grit blasting
B/ Diesel consumption - with my usage insignificant - always top up at the end of a session (usually a couple of hours) with maybe 3/4 of a Jerry Can.
C/Apart from the special compressor oil and a battery change mine has given no issues in the last 10 years though it's getting pretty rusty and the internal sound proofing has started to fall off. (That's blown it - it'll fail now!)
D/No you are not raving mad - well if you are so am I !

 

[Lewis_RX8]

calling @brightspark who uses one for blasting and apparently, he still has some neighbours

 

[Bond]

Regarding noise. I borrowed a setup once for blasting at home, fired the compressor up not bad at all. Helmet on and start blasting away, 20 mins later my normally understanding neighbour is round like wtf. Turns out the compressor is quiet at tick over but when you start blasting it goes full revs and you dont hear with the air helmet on

 

[awemawson]

‘Suppose I’m lucky, nearest neighbour is half a mile away

 

[brightspark]

there quite noisy and is the blasting. im quite fortunate as i have a large garage between the gear and the houses over the road so all the noise is deflected in to an open field and no one notices the compressor runs at full speed once u start blasting have you got the space for open blasting. or a big shed to do it in.apart from the noise theres the dust and spent grit to clean up

 

[Agrismith]

Depends on your setup but not all setups can run on a 2 tool machine like wise not all 2 tool machines are equal

 

[brightspark]

Depends on your setup but not all setups can run on a 2 tool machine like wise not all 2 tool machines are equal

a 90cfm comp will run a pot with a 6.o mm jet at 90 psi. ok for doing car wheels motorbike frames cabinets and car chassis etc anything bigger and u could do with a 150cfm comp and a larger jet to get the job done fast

 

[bayzoo]

Thanks all - I suppose this was the worst place I could ask these questions in the hope you’d put me off buying new tools! In reality if I do want to do any future blasting it’ll likely be smaller items, so a 2 x compressor setup would likely be ok for 3mm I’m lead to believe?

I haven’t bought a place yet, and who knows when the market will allow me to do so but I can’t try and get a place that will allow some aspects of my new hobbies.

I ended up buying (bit of an impulse buy) a 15 CFM 2 stage 100L Abac, mainly due to the deal I got. Do 2 stage compressors give a lower CFM at lower pressures compared to a single stage?

There seems to be conflicting arguments. Should have read more into it…

 

[brightspark]

a 2x 14cfm setup will give good results with a 3mm jet and a constant 28cfm supply at 90psi either open blasting or in a cabinet with a pressure pot and a good dust extracta without costing the earth

 

[bayzoo]

a 2x 14cfm setup will give good results with a 3mm jet and a constant 28cfm supply at 90psi either open blasting or in a cabinet with a pressure pot and a good dust extracta without costing the earth

That sounds more like it - so you’d use a pressure pot with a cabinet rather than these feed tubes?

 

[frank horton]

I used to run two big elec comps for blasting chassis, tractors etc....just kept burning out the motors, and these were not old junker comps.....
decided to buy a Atlas Copco road comp......luckily it came with nearly 100m of rubber hose......
found I used to put the comp at least 50m away cos of the noise.....
I bought this big'un for the workshop and blast cabinet.....which was ok but it was a strain when chassis blasting with a pot.....
so the road comp stays.....

 

[graffian]

We were told we needed as much air as possible, and as we hung about with the son of the owner of a plant hire company we got a road compressor.....

WOur compressor could empty five jerry cans of diesel in a day, but we only did that a few times, generally
we went a few days on five cans of diesel. Diesel was 11p a litre. But we never had enough
work to spend all day grit blasting. Grit blasting used as much air as the compressor produced. Siphon gun with bead or ali oxide and the compressor barely came off idle.

WOur first compressor was a rough and battered AtlasCopco 4 tool compressor. Matey talked in tools rather than CFM. He didn't say how many tools the Hydrovane
was, but it looked new and the back was bristling with places to plug air chisels in, clearly meant for us.

With nothing around the compressor it made enough noise on full chat that all the blokes from the other workshops came and had a whinge about noise. Annoy a
whinger become a sport, but the place didn't have planning permission and keeping the neighboring houses happy was good, so we set about turning it down.
We built a thermalite wall around the compressor and roofed the compressors house with fence panels. Then we filled the compressors house with rolls of roof insulation.
We did the building and insulation in stages, with a wall around the compressor and roof over it, the people in the workshops by the gate[70 yards away] stopped whinging.
With loadsa insulation you could stand next to the wall when the compressor was on full chat and hardly hear it, but could feel the the ground rumbling.
When it was at it's quietest you could see the heat haze rising from it's house and the wall around it was warm.
We got a Hydrovane when the AtlasCopco seized.
We fine tuned the insulation and got it so we didn't annoy anyone unduly and the compressor didn't seize.
We had the compressor control panel and radiator inside the unit.

 

[bayzoo]

Forgive my ignorance but is grit blasting a particular type of shot blasting used for heavy duty cleaning?

 

[brightspark]

Forgive my ignorance but is grit blasting a particular type of shot blasting used for heavy duty cleaning?

theres a fair few types of media .chilled iron shot. copper slag grit sand .crushed glass is getting popular for expendable theres diffrent grades depending on what you are blasting

 

[graffian]

I should have said, chilled iron grit.
We were told not to put anything else through the pot, not that I can remember why.
So we used bead and ali oxide with the siphon gun.
A local coater gave us a few bags of Jblast[I had nothing to do with it] and I gather the cabinet went dark pretty much
as soon as Gray stepped on the pedal. It went dark because the filter was blocked with Jblast dust. We tried blowing
the filter clean, then my mates wife washed the filter a few times, but it was blocked for good and had to be replaced.
So that was a good reason to not stick anything but chilled iron in the pot.
The bloke who gave us the Jblast, blasted in the open so had no problems.

Chilled iron is much more aggresive than aluminium oxide.
Blasting with ali oxide you see the layers as they go[slowly go] chilled iron you see paint then you see grey metal.

Anyone seen an automatic blaster?

 

[awemawson]

The JB Blast I inherited with my Hodge Clemco when I bought it was copper slag and intended for one time use as it fractures on impact.
I now use crushed glass in the big blaster that I find much better, and less susceptible to absorbing moisture.
My cabinet blaster has chilled iron iirc and of course the media is used over and over again. The JB Blast would not be at all suitable .

 

[8ob]

I can’t see a road tow and blasting set up being being acceptable in anything other than a farm location, the noise and dust cloud would have a council officer at your door within minutes.

Bob

 

[brightspark]

I can’t see a road tow and blasting set up being being acceptable in anything other than a farm location, the noise and dust cloud would have a council officer at your door within minutes.

Bob

nahh u do it on a weekend on there days off

 

[pedrobedro]

A friend of mine had an industrial unit and used to blast using an ex gas board van with a built in compressor and generator. It was brilliant for mobile work as it had somewhere to sit and brew up using the generator and you could plug the airline into the side of the van to blast. It was greedy on diesel and you did need ear muffs.