[Shop-talk] Fwd: Small compressors

[David Scheidt]

forgot to include the list.
On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 10:37 AM Mark Andy via Shop-talk
<shop-talk at autox.team.net> wrote:
>
> Howdy,
>
> I haven't ever actually used one, but the first thing I'd check out would be the inexpensive quiet compressors.  Stuff like this, though there are obviously others...
>
> https://www.harborfreight.com/air-tools-compressors/air-compressors-tanks/2-gallon-135-psi-ultra-quiet-hand-carry-jobsite-air-compressor-64596.html
>

I'll repeat what I said somewhere else about quiet compressors:


There are two or three companies making the small quiet compressors,
which are sold under lots of different brand names. There are
sometimes slight differences between them: some versions have steel
tanks, some have aluminum, some are slightly lower pressure than
others. These compressors are not designed to last forever, the
expected pump life is only a few thousand hours. That’s a year on a
job site, and probably the rest of my life in my hobby and home
improvement shop. The two gallon compressors produce about 2
cfm/minute, which is enough for any trim nailer use, and inflating
tires and such like. The best of them are ~60 db. My dishwasher is
claimed to be 60db, and it’s a quiet machine.

I would not buy an expensive compressor from HF. They have only a 90
day warranty, no parts support (Even things they claim to have parts
for, they don’t), so if it breaks you can’t easily fix it. For about
the same money, you can buy the same machine from someone willing to
put a warranty on it. I’d buy one of the cheap pancakes if I had a
need for one, because I’m sure they’d last long enough for me to feel
I’d got what I needed it for, but for $150, I want something that will
last.

The Bostitch framing nailer I have requires something like 9 cfm of
air at 80psi—but that’s to shoot 100 nails a minute. If you’re not
doing production framing, you might be able to get along with one of
these.

Since  I wrote that, I bought one from Menards.  It was on sale, and
cheaper than the HF one, not on sale, it's about the same price.  It's
got a real warranty, from someone who knows what that means.  It's
dead silent, less noise than my dishwasher.  It does fine for tires
and dusting, and a small nailer.  I haven't done any framing with it,
but I did test the nailer with it; it fires two or three nails before
the compressor turns on.  I think it would be okay for small things,
and unusable for something like a fence, or building a house.



--
David Scheidt
dmscheidt at gmail.com


-- 
David Scheidt
dmscheidt at gmail.com