Portable Air Compressors

PipeGuy

What kind of compressors do you guys own. What's good, what's bad? I've ruled out buying the little one (4 hp, 4 gal) I was looking at and have settled on buying a larger 'roll around' style. What capacity compressors do you use?
I've had some succes buying from Northern Tool. They have a house brand and sell Ingersoll-Rand. Years ago (20) I used an Emglow pretty regularly. It always seemed to work OK. Thoughts?

Mike Finley

I'm probably the nerd here.

I only own a Porter Cable pancake compressor. Bought it with my very first nail gun as a kit and have never been able to bring myself to buy anything bigger. Everytime I look at another bigger compressor I stare at it for awhile, get all dreamy about blowing up my own weather balloons or buying an air powered sander and sanding off the side of a wallmart late at night, but then I grab it tenatively and realize how freaken heavy it is and go buy something cordless that doesn't use air instead. I am definitly guilt of abusing the hell out of that little compressor, but I'm so tired of lugging heavy crap around that even that little pancaker feels too heavy at the end of the day.

PPro

What do you plan to run off it? (What type and how many guns?)

For a shop compressor, where only 1 gun will be attatched, the small pancake's can't be beat. PC makes a good one for the price. I dont like PC's bigger ones too much though.

For bigger guns or more guns, Dewalt (Emglow), makes great compressors. Husky makes a cheap one on wheels that Home Craphole and the like sell, it has actually lasted longer than we expected.

We have an old (10+ years) Campbell Hausfield that we run 4-5 15gauge guns off all day long, every day. It's a 6 gallon. Never been serviced, beat to hell, still runs like a champ.

I'd say for the money Dewalt is your best bet. They're made by Emglow, and Emglow rules. For a cheaper alternative, the Husky works well. For one gun, PC pancake.

PipeGuy

Odd as it may sound, I just neeed the air. I use it to fill inflatable plugs that are used in testing pipeline sections. A big plug is about 150 gallons at 30 PSI, a small one is only about 5 gallons. A portable tank is all I need for the small plugs but the logistics of inflating big plugs (and keeping them inflated) can require hundreds of gallons of air. I'm mostly wondering about quality and reliability.

Teetorbilt

Pipe, There are all sorts of compressors that most here would not be familiar with. You can get HVLP, vane type and others. I used to use a 65 CFM Hydro-Vane in the shop, it works pretty hard once you get over 100 PSI but it can sure put out the volume. I played with some others on a goofy waterpump system a guy was trying to develop.
You might think of a 2 stage system using a shopvac for the initial fill and then swapping over to a smaller compressor to build and maintain pressure. I'll dig around in the archives and see what I can find.

Mike Finley

Pipe a 150 gallons is only 20 cubic feet. @ only 30 psi that means one of those 6 gallon pancake compressors would fill it in 5-6 minutes. At least just doing the math based on their numbers of 3.7 cf/minute @ 45 psi.

PPro

As long as Mike's math is correct (which it seems to be), I would just buy a PC pancake compressor. Cheap, small, light, runs well. Sounds like everything you need...

mark lauzon

If you need an insane amount of air use a portable air-screw
mark
www.stoneadvice.com
"slab fabricator heaven"

flsmca

I bought a HITACHI Ec119 2.5HP some months ago. I am pretty glad with it. Works pretty well, smooth and recovers the charge in a few seconds. Made in Italy. I have found some reviews about Hitachi tools that say their service is no good, no sure if they are refering to Compressors -Something important to consider-. When I bought this compressor I had to options in mind: My compressor and the Award winner Dewalt D55155. It is great! the design, the performance, I am not an expert, but this compressor was named "One of Top 10 New Tools of 2002" from Workbench Magazine(Feb, 2002). I choosed HITACHI for the $50 diference. Obviusly Dewalt is a biger company with more customer satisfaction involved. by the way they are the same Emglo compresors. Both compressors are for Job site work, to run Framing and finish nailers.....this is all for I use my unit! Hope it helps---

Longacre

I too have the Porter-Cable pancake that came with the kit, and have been abusing the hell out of it since I bought is with no ill effects.

reveivl

Me too, PC pancake with the brad nailer deal, got a spiker and started hurting it. I'm still hurting it three years later. Struggles a bit when you spike 160 lin ft of triple lvl's. But it does it, I'm impressed. Rich.

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Bjd

I have a SpeedAire 3/4 hp direct drive built into the truck, we run it either from the buildings power or from an inverter I installed.
For my plasma cutter we run a Ridgid 6Hp thats gas drive its the bomb, as the help goes.

BJD