Has anybody done something specific to minimize the noise from their compressor aside from hiding it away 100 yards from where you live?
I've got a 1 hp, 3 gallon compressor that I use and it makes a terrible racket the once or twice a week that I use it. I'm in an apartment so I'm concerned about affecting the neighbours.
I was thinking of some type of boxed enclosure or mounting it somehow on a foam rubber base to lessen vibration. Any suggestions?
The trouble with a box enclosure is that it may reduce the air flow required for cooling too much.
A rubber base is not likely to reduce noise too much, but it is worth a try. I mounted my compressor on scraps of the composite decking material. This was to avoid scratching my concrete more than anything, but makes it very easy to slide the unit around when I need to get behind it.
Your unit sounds to be small enough it could be hung from the ceiling. This would help vibration but not sound.
Most of the noise is the compressor/motor/cooling fan. Can you install any sound absorbing material on the walls/ceiling near the compressor? This may help the neighbours and still allow the unit to cool itself. Insulation works well for sound absorbing. The more trapped air the better.
I recently upgraded from a 2HP 20 gal unit to a 3HP (rated 7 but this is hype) 60 gal unit. This is much quieter than the small unit. I doubt you will be able to upgrade.
Dave Paine.
I was thinking of an insulated box and if necessary, I could add some type of small fan for air input. The few times I'm running it per week, I'm only using it for a total of less then ten minutes each time and during that period it usually only cycles on once to maintain its pressure. With that usage, I know it's not going to overheat. However, in the near future I plan to be running it for some longer periods with a stapler and if I can get the noise toned down a little, I'm sure I'd find other uses for it too.
I maybe worrying about nothing. I only run it in the daytime and the noise of it is not that much greater than a noisy vacuum, I was mostly concerned with vibrations going though the floor to a neighbour's apartment. You have a good idea about suspending it though, maybe even suspending it inside a box of some type. I'll try the foam cushion route as a beginning and see how that works out.
I have read about a box lined with carpeting in side works well. Drill a hole in it some where to allow air in for recharging. Apparently there are no ill effects form over heating.
Seems reasonable however I have read in several magazines about compressors being put in carpet lined boxes with no ill affects. Air flow is not reduced. Air flow is recycled.
Actually most of the noise comes from the air intake/ muffler.
That's a good idea and convenient too. I'm about to adopt a cat and will be building a half decent cat tree/scratching post. I was planning on using the pneumatic stapler I mentioned earlier to cover the tree with carpeting.
It's real nice when a bunch of small projects all seem to coincide with each other.
The convoluted or 'egg crate" foam is supposed to be best at absorbing sounds.
Should be ok, it's not continuous duty. I had one of those heavy duty impact printers (remember those?) during the early 1980's and when its on a printing cycle it sounds like machine gun firing even at half a block away. Put it in a box and almost all that noise was gone, even without insulation. For sound absorption, high density underlayment carpet foam pad works wonders, much better than the stuff they use on high end speaker enclosures.
While the smaller compressors tend to be louder because of higher RPM's I wonder if you could simply extend the intake and muffler and simply box that portion. It may be just enough that you do not have to use a lot of wood covering the whole set up.
I have been working in an industry that is heavily dependant on compressors since 1986. In that time, I have seen many compressors die due to lack of cooling. Heat buildup does matter, a lot. You would have less problem with compressors used at the hobby level due to light and intermmittant use but the better the (cool) airflow, the longer it will last.
Yes I agree in an industry setting but for a hobby setting I do not think heat is going to be a problem. And since a hole is in deed in the box to let air in for recharging there will be a continuous supply of fresh air coming in when it is running. I recall about 20 years ago the compressor room at the dealership that I worked at. 6-200 gallon compressors 3 on top of 3, that never shut down until the end of the day. You did not even want to think of walking in the room where they were at because of the heat. Oddly they were never any problem the 9 years that we used them and they were far from new when we bought the dealership.
I was just going to make this statement.
My 25 year old Sears direct drive 1 hp compressor is extremely noisy and it all seems to be coming from the air intake. Can you buy mufflers for these things?
dickm
Heat would be a serious problem for my 30gal Sears oil lubed unit, if enclosed, even in a "hobbyist" environment. I've run it enough that the heat coming off the pump feels reminiscent of feeling the heat pouring off an automotive engine. It doesn't take all that long for it to heat up, and an oilless unit, I'd expect, would get hotter quicker. One would have to send some serious amount of air into any type of small enclosure to keep the unit from overheating.
Dave
maybe a combination cat tree/compressor enclosure? with the compressor up off of the floor for sound isolation, carpet inside and out and multiple perches for the critter....
It should make a difference. Ingersol Rand makes mufflers for the intake of their large compressors (say, 100 hp and up) so the same principle should apply to the smaller ones.
As acoustics are often part of electrical engineering, (it spills over into architecture) the core of the discipline are simple, basic physics.
Once a noise is air-bound, only two things will kill it: mass and dissipation. In both cases, the energy is converted into heat (as infinitesimally small that heat may be)
Transmitted (through a body other than air) noise obeys those same rules. Parking your compressor on a heavy slab (like a patio stone they're cheap enough) will have an immediate, positive result. If you then also isolate the patio stone from the floor via a dissipating medium, like four tennis balls, not a whole lot will get to the floor. You will feel the immediate difference in your feet standing beside the running compressor. Cut 4 pieces of 3/4" x 1-1/2 PVC drain pipe to use as rings to put the tennis balls in so they won't roll around.
IF you're going to hang the unit from the ceiling, the noise will be transmitted to the people upstairs...unless you use rubber bungee cords.
Egg cartons will dissipate some reflective sound, but in a very narrow band of frequencies. basically useless for your problem as the compressor puts out wide-bandwidth energy. The absorption of a medium is measurable by the thickness as it is a multiple of the wave-length. Therefore, carpet will only kill very small (high) frequencies. The thicker, the better.
A box with a muffin fan... yup.. works for me.
On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 13:29:40 GMT, the blithe spirit "Leon" clearly indicated:
I really want to make one of these for my compressor. The last time I used it I accidentally left it on. A week later, when I was doing some intricate work on something else, it unexpectedly kicked in and I could have lost a finger. Yeah, the intakes are the loudest part of a compressor.
Use the foam-backed I/O carpet on both the inside and outside of the smaller U, the inside of the larger, and the inside of the top. Ask your local carpet places for scrap from a commercial job; free or cheap. Loose-weave carpet is good, and since it's all hidden, it shouldn't make much difference if scraps don't match or what color it is. Make 2 U-shaped plywood pieces and bisquick a top on it (gluing the carpeting on first.) Route the hose out through either opening, either of which allows full airflow.
Make a cutout in the smaller U for adjusting the regulator if necessary and install a padded door on the outside U to get to it.
-this side against the wall- ================================= ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc\c|| \|| 4" gap between U's. cccccccccccccccccccccccccc c|| ||========================c c|| ||c/cccccccccccccccccccccc c|| ||/ c|| ||c c|| ||c compressor c|| c = carpeting ||c c|| || and === are ply ||c c|| ||c c|| ||\ c|| ||c\cccccccccccccccccccccc c|| ||========================c c|| cccccccccccccccccccccccccc c|| /|| ccccccccccccccccccccccccccc /c|| =================================
The larger U has the top. The smaller is braced in the corners and nearly full height so the top contacts it, too. Use any old ply for the inner U, Baltic Birch (unstained Cherry?) for the outer one. Finish it (no poly) and use it for a work area (if your compressor is short enough.)
This should bring the noise level down bunches, maybe 6-10dB.
I'd question that. if the consumption air is enough to cool the unit then why do they put cooling fins all over the body of the pump?
Because if you overheat them, they die. The air throughput is not nearly enough to disapate the amount of heat generated. As metal gets hotter, it softens, increasing wear. It takes suprisingly little heat for metal to soften. Solution: cool the pump or make your compressor from inconel.
Read through the responses. Have you asked your neighbors if it is bothering them?
Jim
Upscale wrote:
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