Piston Compressors - What you need to know.

It all depends what you want to use the compressor for.

Is it for light home use in your shed or perhaps a bit more serious work in your home workshop.

Do you want to use it in a light industrial way - In your shop, small factory or garage. 

Whatever you want to do with it you must be careful  to buy the correct machine for the job and be realistic about what you expect from it. Dont expect a cheap and cheerful little direct drive machine to run a line of CNC machines or a 3 man body shop - It wont last many hours in the wrong application.

So lets look at what your options are and how much you will need to spend.

Direct Drive Compressors - These are the cheapest of small compressors and the most light duty. best suited for light home workshop use where your use will only be occassional and for fairly short periods. Prices start from under £100, but expect to go up to £350 for a best quality model.

Belt Drive Compressors - These range from around £350 up to as much as you want to spend. For a fairly serious home workshop, a good 3hp machine on a 150 litres tank would be around £600 for a reasonable one, but you could easily go up to £1500 for a real top quality machine.

If you only have 240 volts ( Single Phase ) then things start to get a bit limited. 3hp is about as far as you can go on an ordinary household plug without blowing fuses or dimming all the lights in your house. But if your household electrics are strong enough there are other options. We do a 4hp single phase machine which is a definate improvement over a 3hp.

If you want more it is possible to run two 3hp compressors on a common tank - but you have to very careful that your electric supply and cable will cope with this type of load. If it will then you will have around 30cfm of air which will cope with most things you are likely to want to do.

We have lots of customers who manage to get the air that they want on 240 volts and would be glad to try and help you - but you must be realistic about things.

Currently we are having a new range of 240 volt Piston Compressors made to our specifications and you can be assured that you will then be getting a quality machine, more than suitable for your needs.  We will have 3hp belt drive models on 50, 100 and 150ltrs tanks, all with full UK air certificates. Also available will be our new 4hp - 240 volt model on a 200ltrs tank - these have been great sellers to date and are the most powerfull pump available anywhere.

The 4hp model is particulary popular with serious home mechanics and garages with only single phase electrics - the feedback has been very positive and we are increasing our order levels as we have been swamped by orders for this model.

These new machines will only be available from our ebay shop

I will be writing another guide to larger Piston Compressors for those of you who need more power and have 3 phase available.