In a message dated 12/28/98 5:52:08 PM !!!First Boot!!!,
mikel@ichips.intel.com writes:
<snip>
<< I also noticed
most of the noise from the compressor is due to the intake; maybe some sort
of muffler on the front of it could really silence it?
Tank draining: The instructions that came with my compressor say that the
tank
must be drained on a daily basis. Now, the petcock on mine isn't too bad to
reach,
but it is a pain to drain it, and then run up the pressure again the next
day; I
can maybe spend an hour or so in the garage each evening, and waiting (and
listening) >>
<snip>
Fellow airheads-
Weird, but yeah the intake does make most of the noise. When I got my setup,
the salesman (I bought it at a "real" air compressor place not a kwiky mart,
so they had all the neat stuff right there), sold me what looks like a
lawnmower muffler for the intake. It just screws on and cuts the noise
tremendously. He also sold me a foot operated drain. This unit just screws in
the bottom of the tank like the original petcock, but has a long lever to push
down with your foot and a fitting for a hose on the other side. The hose on my
setup runs into a little catch tank (so it doesn't get all over the floor)
that I empty periodically. Instead of bending over, all you have to do is
slide your foot onto the lever, push down and wait until it sounds like all
the water is out of the valve. In addition, I ran several pipes up and down
the wall to form additional cooling and water traps. Since I'm no good at
ASCII art, we'll try this the hard way. The compressor has a ballcheck valve
at the outlet, connected to a huge Airequipt style hose to absorb any vibes.
>From there, the pipe it connects to goes up the wall to the ceiling,
horizontal for 2"-3", then down almost to the floor, horizontal again (with a
petcock in this piece, then back up toward the ceiling, horizontal, then down
again...you get the idea. I have the final water trap/regulator combo at the
end of this pipe. The water trap doesn't get much water into it until you have
really given the system a good workout, but under normal usage each of the
petcocks will drain quite a bit of water each time they are cycled.
Whaddaya mean Overkill???
Nick in Nor Cal
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