Air Compressor............ Again......

Stu,
you need a clamp on amp meter. Maybe the the thermal is bad of who knows. Something like this. they are fairly cheap and useful to have around the shop for all kinds of throuble shooting.

I've got one Don.........


..... I have it set up so it cuts out at about 85 psi and it was pulling 14.4 Amps.

I think that what I was calling a "Thermal Overload" may actually be just a circuit breaker, and it would kick out at 15 Amps.

Tim the enclosed fan on the motor works well, the motor never really got "hot" warm is more like it.

I really do think that the one bad reed is the cause of this, I have to decide if I want to fix it or not

Cheers!

Sounds to me like everything's going right so far unless it takes an obscene long time to come up to pressure... that'd point at that reed valve. If it comes up nice & quick, I'd say the valve is working.

That breaker sounds underrated for that motor, though. It TAKES a fair amount of motor to spin a two-stage compressor, and 14A sounds right in line with what ought to be consumed by such a motor.

An appropriately-sized feeler gauge would work well for a reed, though. You can even anneal 'em for drilling, then reharden & retemper 'em for use.

It does take a fair bit of time to come up to pressure, but remember, the unit is actually rated to 115psi, and it used to hit that, but not now, it will only hit about 90psi, before it trips the breaker. It has a 16 gallon tank, from dead empty until the breaker trips, it takes about 10 minutes and only get to about 100psi.

The reeds do not have holes in them, take a look back at the pics above, they are just flat pieces of steel, not like any I've seen before. Most I've seen have a hole in one end. The reeds sit in a depression carved out of the head or the cylinder, depending on which way they are meant to work, and then get pushed flat against the opposite side to seal.

Next time I go to the DIY store, I'll buy a cheap set of feeler gauges, they are only about $10 or so, the set I own now are much better quality and cost me about $75, so I'll not be using them

Honestly, I have not seen reeds like this before, they are very strange to me, but then again, I've not had a ton of experience with them either

Cheers!

As the pressure rises in the tank the motor works harder to push air into it. The motor will typically start with a high initial amperage draw, go through a lower draw and then ramp up as it reaches the higher PSIs. If your breaker is tripping before the appropriate PSI then I think your motor might be the issue.

For what it's worth

Cheers,