The mother of all compressors

I've seen bigger, but that's certainly a big 'un. With that much air, now you need to build an entry for that pumpkin chuckin' contest...

Have we told you "You suck!" today yet?

Okay, now one very important question: How do you plan on powering up either one of those beasties at a private residence?

The Quincy compressor, maybe - if it's a 5 HP and not a 10 HP. A VFD will get you 3-Ph if you need it, but you still have to feed enough watts to the input before they come out the output.

And that big hunk of Blue Iron will dump the grid for the whole neighborhood if you turn it up all the way and get the rod stuck instead of struck...

Start making friends at the local power utility, and see if you can talk them into a 200A 480V service for the Toy Box. Umm, garage.

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Wow. Nice one. However, I would suggest having that tank hydrostatically tested if it has no record of a recent test. That tank is big enough to blow your entire garage sky high if it ruptures. Dave

Looks like we need to train Iggy to LOOK and not Take from the museum!

We might have to rename you close to Gunner if this is kept up -

What a big kill. The welder is one of those switcher types in mega amps!

Martin

Mart> Rescued from Illinois Train Museum today.

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Well, I bought it from the museum, etc. Rescue referred to the fact that they sat there outdoors destined for scrap pile. Both seem to work though.

What sort of air tools are you possibly running that would require something that big??? Are you running a hard rock mining operation under your house?

Nice find. How do you plan on moving it around? I'd assume it weighs several thousand pounds. Not to mention that you must be running out of room in your shop by now...

And you were just asking if that trailer would carry much. HA!

Steve

That trailer did not even squeak when we took my Bridgeport mill off of it with a Bobcat. That is good military hardware there... Then it did not complain a bit when we dropped a Miller Big Blue on it.... Now I gotta beg and barter him to move it again soon!

Rob

Fraser Competition Engines Chicago, IL.

Rob

Twice, I moved something that was 2 times as heavy as that Bridgeport. In addition, one of those times me and the scrap man went on a wild goose chase to find someone with a forklift, at which point I discovered that there are too many potholes in Addison that were too deep, and that some are sometimes covered with snow. But the trailer seems to have held up.

Yep. When building this trailer, I asked a lot of what some sneering people may call dumb questions. If I ask myself now, would the trailer be better built if I did not ask those questions, the answer is obviously no. Your own advice to use 7018, for example was particularly good, as I would otherwise stick to something that was not as good.

That's how you learn stuff, Ig. You try to think it through ......... weld it as good as you can ..... ask others.

Then overload it.

Steve ;-)

That's easy. He'll attach very clever casters to it.

Humpf! Now, I did see a big compressor, once. It was an Ingersoll-Rand, single cylinder, horizontal, run by a 300 Hp salient-pole synchronous motor. They used the synchronous motor to adjust power factor for the whole plant. (aside: Putting a synchronous motor on line and overexciting the rotor winding causes it to draw a leading power factor from the mains, just like a huge capacitor bank. They hook a phase angle meter to a field current controller and it keeps the plant at near-perfect power factor. This was called a synchronous condenser back in the old days.)

There were actually two of these in a room in the Emerson Electric defense plant built in 1951 or so.

Jon

The biggest one I've come across had a rated output of 5000 Hp. Water cooled output and virtually no moving parts.

I've seen part of what's left of it, but sadly this one isn't working anymore :(

Google up "Taylor air compressor" in Victoria Michigan if you are curious. They were highly dependent on the proper location to be workable :)

IIRC I saw that air compression process mentioned in the likes of Mother Earth News years ago but on a much smaller scale. It's possible to do it anywhere you have a flow of water and sufficient head.

Here's one.

Ah yes! that is the beasty. I couldn't remember the name of that one and wondered if it was still around. Too lazy to dig around in my books and find the name...

The one in Victoria iced up a couple times at the intake/bulkhead. No one was paying attention and the resulting overpressure condition blew the floating bulkhead through the roof and on into the surrounding area. Ugh! Quite a mass of metal to fling into the air.

There are still two heads left at Victoria (originally three, one was lost when the hydro-dam flume burst years ago) rusting away in the weeds/brush. The buildings housing it are long gone. Underground it is most likely still there but all plugged up with sediment/debris. If you don't know what you are looking for you will completely miss seeing what is left of it :(

There were several of these built back then.

Much like the old time water ram, I remember one from my youth - the house was long gone but the old pipe still gave a squirt of water every few seconds. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Dad had one on their farm when he was a kid. It made quite the impression on him, he was still pretty young.

You can still get/buy them. The last I knew Lehman's Hardware still sold them (among others). See: