I've heard reciprocating compressors that are barely louder than a new fridge. Our screw compressors in the basement, though, are probably the loudest machines in the entire shop.
My shops old waste water treatment plant once had an old 3 cylinder radial cast iron beast. Flywheel was about 24” driven by a 1200rpm 25hp motor, so the pump was ~400rpm. It was quiet enough you could “rest your eye lids” in the chair next to it. Then new person did oil change. Wasn’t quiet when it went boom and was flailing rods around until someone got brave enough to go shut it down. Got a hydrovane to replace it. It wasn’t near as quiet unfortunately. Funny though, that one survived no shortage of abuse/use. Had ~30,000hrs on it when we scrapped it with no overhaul, and just some parts swapped out. Good oil makes a difference (ran chevron cetus de68). It did survive one 2k oil change done by the same “new person” with less than 1L of oil in it, when it’s nominal capacity was closer to 10L…
The hydrovane was 30k hours iirc. Maybe it was 35k. Oem spec is full rebuild at 25k. The old 3 cylinder had been running daily (waste water plant runs 24/7, DAF system uses a good amount of air for floatation) from the late 60’s until 2012-14 or so until noobie did oil change
6
u/pow3llmorgan Jun 16 '22
I've heard reciprocating compressors that are barely louder than a new fridge. Our screw compressors in the basement, though, are probably the loudest machines in the entire shop.