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Stan Galat, '05 IM, 2276, Tremont, IL posted:

Everything else is cake for that compressor.

Except for an industrial jack hammer... 

That's great... but mark my words. One day you'll be standing there staring at the compressor and the jack hammer regretting getting the lesser compressor.  

All kidding aside. Nice compressor. I'm jealous. 

I second the PEX.  Very easy to work with and will do the job.  The plumbing type of PEX will work, we have used it in one of our shops at work, however there are PEX products made specifically for compressed air use.  This is one example:

http://www.rapidairproducts.com/

It's important to know that PEX is not good in UV.  It needs to be protected from sunlight.  I do not recommend PVC.  When it fails it will explode into shrapnel.  I have seen a failure where a line was bumped and it exploded.  Luckily no one was hurt.

Be sure and install a water/air separator at the compressor and on each line, and remember to drain it/them once in awhile...lol. It will prevent sending moisture down the line and into your air powered tools. Learned a lesson the hard way when my 3/8" impact wrench seized up due to all the moisture the insides began rusting even with the tool being well oiled and one day it just gave up the ghost. That was running on my then new Ingersoll-Rand 120 gal/10hp compressor...Man, are there times I miss having that old shop

Ed, is yours 110v or 220v? reason I ask is there are now some60gal on the market in 110v. In my old shop in WA I had a small 60 gal compressor(came with the house/shop) similar to the one you have with 220v and it seemed the compressor didn't cycle as much as the 110v  C-H 60 gal one I have now...when using it it seems it continuously cycles, works well but just seems to run all the time when using it.

 

TRP posted:

Copper? For the air line?  Couldn't you use really thick PVC pipe?

Yes.

It doesn't even need to be all that thick. I'm a pipefitter, and I did mine plumbed my entire shop in Sch 40 PVC-- 4 hose reels, and a blast cabinet, plumbed in 3/4" PVC purchased from Menard's.

Run it on the ceiling, and put isolation valves on your drops. It'll be every bit as nice as copper, and about 10x as nice as PEX. If you want to get carried away, run BIP-- but it's totally unneeded. PVC doesn't deteriorate with moisture, so the air stays cleaner at the point of use.

Spend the (considerable) money you'll save on driers and separators. You're going to love it. A big compressor really spoils a guy for anything less-- but it's like drugs. You always end up wanting more...

edsnova posted:

Thanks for the Stan Seal of Approval. That means a lot.

That seal, and $2.75 will get you a large coffee at Starbucks, and not much else. Don't be like Stupid-Stan: hang on to your tools in the event your sell your house.

Last edited by Stan Galat

1. Yeah, 220 AC

2. Yeah, copper. Stan is, so far, the only person I've come across to recommend PVC for this application. I wanted to do it--really. Love me some PVC cement! Even have a big-ass, rifled potato gun someone gave me in payment for work I did for them. So...PVC is my friend.

I think it'd work, too. Probably. But all the hotrodder shop forum guys say nyet. I figure better safe than sorry, especially if it only means a day or two's labor and an extra $150 or so.

I bought (so far) 80-feet of 1/2-inch copper pipes and many, many fittings--about $200 total. I intend to sweat them all together (sharkbite-style push-on fittings are also specifically not rated for air use).

I also have six drain valves, four in-line dryers, a (faulty, turns out) pressure regulator and a couple pieces of flex line to connect the main tank to the distribution system. I don't like either of these flex lines: one is an 18-inch long braided 3/4-inch water line with a half-inch sharkbite coupler on one end. The other is a 3-foot long 3/8-inch air line with a swivel connect. The water line I'm bringing back to HD. The swivel hose I'll probably keep, but it's too long for the job I want it for--and a little too small, I think.

Next stop: Tractor Supply for an 18-inch length of 1/2-inch hydraulic hose with 1/2-inch fittings on each end. That should be about $12. The only hold-up is getting it with a connector I could spin and disconnect it if necessary without melting the solder out of the joint. 

YEAH!  

Copper!  Go with Copper!

Both Chris and I have done copper tubing (thin wall) for our air supplies.  Me, because I'm anal about that stuff and Chris because he's, well....., Chris.  And the apple doesn't fall far from the tree - You should have seen his "Prep and Landing" front yard this past Christmas - sequential landing lights and everything....

Do the copper tubing and walk away knowing that nothing is going to go wrong with it.

Those flexible lines, however.......

Stan wrote: "Don't be like Stupid-Stan: hang on to your tools in the event your sell your house."

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!!?

Say it ain't so, dude...

NO ONE, other than my son, would EVER get my tools.  Some of them were Chris' Grandfather's and Great Grandfather's.   My primary set (all S-K Wayne) was a Christmas present from my Dad when I was 16 years old.  My MIG, TIG and Gas welding set-up was my late Brother's.

No way......

OK, so the GE Toaster Oven I use for baking painted and powder-coated parts is one thing, but.....

Gordon,

I got the tools, except for those that were "built in" (the compressor, the blast cabinet, the parts washer, the tire rack, Wilton vice, all 3 stainless benches and the custom maple butcher-block bench). My cabinets, etc. all went with me. Every single VW spare is stuffed in a box and hiding in the back of the '64 panel van (the entire van is stuffed-- floor to ceiling, wall to wall) until I get a new space ready.

I've got tools in every work van (each one is really like a hardware store on wheels), in the commercial shop (which I also had to move), and in storage. Still, losing my "hobby space" hurt way worse than I thought is was going to. That place really was a sanctuary from reality, and losing it hurt more than the several zillion dollars worth of stuff I left behind.

But, I'm closing on a property in a nearby town on Feb 8. I've got a plan for a new place that will accommodate one lift at a minimum, possibly two (four post and two post). I'll do all of it again, but this time planned out from the beginning. Hopefully, this one I'll have until I'm too old to care. 

Well, I didn't build this shop until I was 64 years old.  Grew up with a heated shop when I was a kid, but only had heat in one past shop of my own (when I was building Pearl).  Saw a Hot Dawg heater on Craigslist that looks interesting for the current space.  Of course, then I have to hire a gas pipe fitter to install the damn thing and THEN I have to feed it (with Propane) but that would make this the best shop ever for me - and most certainly my last shop ever, too.

My late brother's shop was small, but exceedingly well equipped with the filtered and dried air, blast booth, surgically-clean surroundings (he built snow mobile racing engines), more measurement tools than I can understand along with more torque wrenches than you can imagine, a snowmobile lift and one entire grouping for English, and another grouping for Metric tools.  I've been slowly buying bits and pieces (like the welders) from my sis-in-law as she gets tired of stumbling over things, but until I manage to get Kathy's car out of my 2-car shop (which ain't ever gonna happen) I am totally out of space for new floor-mounted tools.  Ya work with what ya got..........

Like I said, Stan: keep focused on the new garage, and how awesome that will be.  You can do it, dude.  Settling 2/8??  Well now there's a big milepost.  Good luck, hope it all goes smooth.

Copper vs. plastic?  I wonder about that one.  Would have to do some basic strength of materials on that, but I bet the plastic is strong enough to hold the pressure safely, but is it durable enough? That might be the question -- what if it gets bumped?  The copper might be more forgiving, is what I am thinking, so less likely to rupture under mishandling.  Plastic is way easier to put together, obviously, and less likely to burn the garage down while you're doing it.  I've heard stories . . .

Copper is absolutely a more rugged material than PVC, but not to the extent that you'd think. Schedule 40 pipe is actually pretty tough to break, assuming the pipe is kept from temperature extremes (it doesn't like extreme cold so much). If you can't keep the shop above freezing, heat is probably a higher priority than a bunch of air terminals.

My thinking is: if you run the lines on the ceiling and drop down to hose reels that are 6 ft off the floor... I'm not sure what is going to happen to any of the pipe. I had to be convinced of it by my dad the retired plumber (since I'm a hairy-chested pipefitter and all)-- but once I started on it, I went nuts with it. I did my piping at the compressor in copper, and adapted to PVC at the ceiling, then did all my runs to various terminations in PVC. The burst pressure of a solvent welded PVC joint far exceeds the working pressure of a single-stage compressor, and if the temp is too high there's a bigger problem than the line material.

I think I had about $20 in all of the pipe, fittings, and isolation valves. It would've been at least 20x that in copper.

Copper's fantastic, and a better material if the ultimate is what you need. All I'm trying to point out is that there is a cheap, good alternative to PEX for guys who'd rather not sweat copper. Everybody's ape for PEX-- and it looks really, really "homemade" in the worst sense of the word, and costs significantly more than PVC. It's a perfectly fine material for compressed air. 

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