A little air compressor project

[Shoreline_]

So originally I was going to ask work if I could take an early 2000's Atlas Copco GA5 that's been sitting in the back for 8 years untouched for my garage. It's a 200v machine and missing a cover so it's never going to be a loaner unless there was one customer that needed a 7.5hp and had sagging 208 mains. It's a really sweet machine, quiet, very robust but it's about the size of a washing machine so more difficult to place. It's also belt driven and has some rubber hoses that are craaaazy expensive to replace if they ever go. A couple months ago we had a customer give us 2 Sullair ES6 because they replaced it. These would be 10hp encapsulated screw type compressors with hard oil lines. Of the two one was locked up in the air end and the other had a bad bearing. I took home the one with a bad bearing and maybe some of you might be interested how they look inside. You can see how compact they are.



So i was really hoping it was the opposite shaft end bearing which is easy to get to but after removing the cooler and the end housing it was the air end side bearing. So I remove the sump housing, split off the air end, remove the pump, and pull out the rotor



Sure enough the bearing is pretty bad. New bearing is 17 dollars. When it comes in I'll take some pictures of reassembling it.

 

[Shoreline_]

Well finally got around to putting on the new bearing. Picked one of the hottest days of the week. The old one was shot. And I've been tripping over these parts for a few weeks now. Used the ol toaster bearing heater and got it hot and slid on first try. Then just re assembly of the *** end. I sorta bent the cooling fan taking it off but I'm going to use variable speed for this compressor and it's not good to variable speed the cooling fan unless it has its own routine. So I may do something different for the cooling fan but for now I'll dig through the junk pile at work looking for a fan. Next week when it cools off it's time to put the air end back on. Gonna need a fresh bottle of 515. The air end plate is sandwiched between the sump cover and the motor front housing so everything has to be gooped, aligned and ready to install all within the setup window of 515.