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Air Venturi air compressor failure

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RedRider

RedRider

Member
Apr 29, 2019
58
6
Ca, United States
 So yesterday morning I decided to fill my 75ci tank like I do everyday from my three month old air Venturi compressor .., bought from pyramid air ..

This time something wasn’t right the pump ran for an extra 20 minutes before I noticed, when I checked the air pressure gauge., it was only reading 3800 pounds. By this time usually it would be done. Also it had a different tone . it sounded like a hissing but I could not find an air leak . To my surprise there was an extra large amount of air coming from the vent or the oil fill cap.

I guess I should started by saying this is my third air Venturi air compressor all failed before the one-year warranty was up. The first two compressors I ran royal purple compressor oil the third one i used Ingersoll-Rand air compressor fluid which I felt was a better choice.

Now back to the compressor that failed last, an the air coming from the fill port .This has really frustrated me. I have to wait approximately 20 days to get my new air compressor because I live in California and it has to go all the way to Ohio and then my new compressor has to come from Ohio to me.

Has anyone out there experienced the same issues with air Venturi compressors ??

I noticed daystate air compressors cost only $600 more and they claim they should last a lifetime and they are made in Italy , rather than China .


 
Thank you very much I truly appreciate it. I sent it off for free and they covered the freight. I didn’t expect that at all. Customer service at pyramyd air has been pretty good.

About the filter. I change the water oil separation filter but I checked the intake filter and it was clean as a whistle. I keep it indoors in my hobby room and I run the air conditioner so it never gets above 60°C. But I was told if you are topping large tanks off you need not to run it more than 40 minutes to an hour at a time. When I get my new one I think I’m only going to fill my tanks to 4000 PSI rather than 4500 every time 
 
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daystate air compressors cost only $600 more and they claim they should last a lifetime ....

Click to expand...

I am afraid that's not the reality. Over the last several months, there has been a number of reports on Daystate failing just in this forum, some did not work well right from the beginning. A guy has got his Daystate replaced by the vendor three times and was still bad .....
 
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 That’s something to keep in mind. I just thought them being made in Italy would be an advantage over Chinese made.

I’m also thinking about the Omega. But currently I’m stuck with air Venturi, the replacement compressor that is * when it comes. It just kills me not to have all the air at my disposal that I want and need. Downtime without a compressor means less shooting. 
 
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Isnt the av compressor cost $1399? Should of gone with the hatsan lighting. It's only 1093 with free shipping from field supply. It has all the features the av has plus more. It reads degree in F instead of C. Has auto purge which you can set to purge any time you want. I set it to 10 min each. It has a desiccant filter after the gold filter to filter moisture. And has digital gauge, which you can set for auto shut off, change from psi reading to bar, set your auto purge and can also be calibrated to match your tank gauge. And best of all, cost less than the av compressor. I have one for a little over a year and still running like new. Only change oil and coolant. Cant believe you already went though 3 av compressor. Damn.
 
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You could also look into an Alpha-Carette from Joe Brancato at airtanksforsale. I haven't heard anything bad about his compressors even though they are from China. Joe supports the compressors and there have been some good reviews on them. They are close to the price of the AV compressors. Also, he's located in Cali. You should at least give Joe a call and talk to him. Other than that, and as much as I hate to say it, I would bypass the Daystate and look into an Alkin brand compressor. They are commercial compressors and you would probably not be able to break it. They are made to run everyday. Yes, they are spendy, about $3k, buy once cry once. If you buy an Alkin, you'll make new friends and you will never have to worry about HPA problems ever.

I have a Shoebox F10, I love it for my needs. Extremely well built, and works well. However, if I ever decide to shoot more that what I currently shoot, I will keep the F10 but I would buy an Alkin without blinking an eye. This is a great sport, and if I want to keep shooting for the next 15-20 years, I would invest in a high quality compressor.
 
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You could also look into an Alpha-Carette from Joe Brancato at airtanksforsale. I haven't heard anything bad about his compressors even though they are from China. Joe supports the compressors and there have been some good reviews on them. They are close to the price of the AV compressors. Also, he's located in Cali. You should at least give Joe a call and talk to him. Other than that, and as much as I hate to say it, I would bypass the Daystate and look into an Alkin brand compressor. They are commercial compressors and you would probably not be able to break it. They are made to run everyday. Yes, they are spendy, about $3k, buy once cry once. If you buy an Alkin, you'll make new friends and you will never have to worry about HPA problems ever.

I have a Shoebox F10, I love it for my needs. Extremely well built, and works well. However, if I ever decide to shoot more that what I currently shoot, I will keep the F10 but I would buy an Alkin without blinking an eye. This is a great sport, and if I want to keep shooting for the next 15-20 years, I would invest in a high quality compressor.
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solid advise..!
 
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I've been reading most everything I could find on the internet about HPA compressors. More info is on the Scuba forums than elsewhere, and it goes back years.

Based on that, I'm staying away from any HPA compressor made in China, no matter who sells it.

The Scuba guys generally consider the German Bauer to be the best in small and light compressors, and the Italian Coltri to be low end, but serviceable. The Daystates are Coltri. There are good Coltri dealers in the US for support, and contacting a Coltri dealer near you might be a good way to go. They often have better pricing than they are allowed to advertise and may have refurbished units.

Whatever you get will require a good moisture filter. The Scuba compressors have the filter tower and instead of a breathing cartridge you can use a moisture cartridge which has greater capacity. Unfortunately Daystate has left out the filter tower on the LC-110 to get the price under 2k, so it will require a separate moisture filter.

Most of the Scuba type compressors use 230V. The ones that use 115V generally require a special 30A or greater circuit. The Daystate LC-110 (really a Coltri MCH-3 low consumption) has a 115V 14.5A motor on it so it is compatible with standard 20A 115V circuits. This reduces the pumping rate a bit, but makes it much easier to find power for it.

I'm in the process of setting up an LC-110 with moisture filtering but am waiting for some parts. I've had one minor problem with a leaking safety valve which AOA sent a replacement for fairly quickly. I will not fill a tank or gun without a proper moisture filter, the air from any of these compressors is at 100% humidity at a fairly warm temperature and carries a lot of moisture. An effective high pressure moisture filter after the water and oil separator is necessary to make the air safe for tanks and guns.

Things I like about the Daystate LC-110 so far are that it is fairly quiet and doesn't require water, and it uses proper high pressure compressor oil so the output air is very clean. It is easy to find parts and service here in the US for it. These devices might be compared to a motorcycle or a medium size generator - would you buy one without good access to parts and service and a long history of reliable operation?

Taking shortcuts to High Pressure Air usually results in failures and greater overall cost.


 
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I've been reading most everything I could find on the internet about HPA compressors. More info is on the Scuba forums than elsewhere, and it goes back years.

Based on that, I'm staying away from any HPA compressor made in China, no matter who sells it.

The Scuba guys generally consider the German Bauer to be the best in small and light compressors, and the Italian Coltri to be low end, but serviceable. The Daystates are Coltri. There are good Coltri dealers in the US for support, and contacting a Coltri dealer near you might be a good way to go. They often have better pricing than they are allowed to advertise and may have refurbished units.

Whatever you get will require a good moisture filter. The Scuba compressors have the filter tower and instead of a breathing cartridge you can use a moisture cartridge which has greater capacity. Unfortunately Daystate has left out the filter tower on the LC-110 to get the price under 2k, so it will require a separate moisture filter.

Most of the Scuba type compressors use 230V. The ones that use 115V generally require a special 30A or greater circuit. The Daystate LC-110 (really a Coltri MCH-3 low consumption) has a 115V 14.5A motor on it so it is compatible with standard 20A 115V circuits. This reduces the pumping rate a bit, but makes it much easier to find power for it.

I'm in the process of setting up an LC-110 with moisture filtering but am waiting for some parts. I've had one minor problem with a leaking safety valve which AOA sent a replacement for fairly quickly. I will not fill a tank or gun without a proper moisture filter, the air from any of these compressors is at 100% humidity at a fairly warm temperature and carries a lot of moisture. An effective high pressure moisture filter after the water and oil separator is necessary to make the air safe for tanks and guns.

Things I like about the Daystate LC-110 so far are that it is fairly quiet and doesn't require water, and it uses proper high pressure compressor oil so the output air is very clean. It is easy to find parts and service here in the US for it. These devices might be compared to a motorcycle or a medium size generator - would you buy one without good access to parts and service and a long history of reliable operation?

Taking shortcuts to High Pressure Air usually results in failures and greater overall cost.

Click to expand...

another terrific post thank you..I agree with your thoughts..so much Fail ..its distracting in this forum ..you really don't know what to think..the scuba forums I have not explored..can you direct to coltri dealers..Where did you purchase yours?
 
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Whatever you get will require a good moisture filter. *SNIP* Unfortunately Daystate has left out the filter tower on the LC-110 to get the price under 2k, so it will require a separate moisture filter.

I'm in the process of setting up an LC-110 with moisture filtering but am waiting for some parts.

Taking shortcuts to High Pressure Air usually results in failures and greater overall cost.
Click to expand...

I agree with the overall theme of what you're saying but I respectfully disagree on the assertion that the LC-110 provides inadequate moisture filtering. It lacks the Grade D breathable air filter. I think, like all things, it depends on the scenario. I live in the South East in a high humidity environment and pump from an air conditioned basement with a dehumidifier present and the water/oil separation tower is adequate for moisture removal.

I think, at the end of the day, use sound judgement which is what your initial post implies. Understand your environment, pay attention to moisture, and take steps to eliminate it's ingress into your equipment. You may not need additional filtering but you need to know that.
 
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 Alan B-

Thank you for that valuable information I definitely will be looking in the direction of better quality and I will be checking out scuba pumps .

Truly appreciated and very informative. All comments I have received have been eye-opening. I will be spending 3000+ dollars to I minimize downtime in my airgun experience .

With good knowledge of products *comes less problems 
 
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When we compress air 200 or 300:1 the humidity gets multiplied by that same factor regardless of the compressor - be it hand pump or low cost import or top of the line commercial machine. So unless your initial humidity is way below 1% the output air is going to be saturated with water vapor at 100% humidity.

The heating of the compression process produces warm or even hot air, so it has increased water vapor capacity. It must condense some moisture as it returns to ambient temperature in tank or gun.

Personally I don't want to introduce warm 100% humid air into my tanks or guns. An effective oil/water separator will remove the condensed liquids. But the water vapor in the warm air is not attenuated at all by the separator. The accepted standard in the high pressure compressor business is to use molecular sieve, activated alumina or equivalent in the high pressure air stream to remove this water vapor. Otherwise it will end up somewhere you probably don't want it. Typically into whatever you pump the air first. So if you fill a tank, that's where the water will go. The air will cool and some liquid will condense on the interior walls. When the air is fed from a tank into the airgun it will not carry the moisture, and as the pressure drops the humidity of the transferred air will also drop, so the airgun is in effect protected by the tank. However if you pump directly into an airgun the moisture has nowhere else to go but into the airgun, and some will condense there as the 100% humid air cools. As the pressure drops in the airgun the water may revaporize depending on the temperature, so you may never find the moisture but you may eventually find the corrosion in the crevices where the moisture remains. Corrosion at high pressures is accelerated.

Study the physics and make your choice. It is a personal choice. Pumping moisture into tanks can cause them to be condemned at the first hydro test. So a very expensive tank is lost at less than 5 years of use. Depending on your airgun collection losing a tank may be cheaper than damaging the airguns. I see a lot of folks pumping directly into the airguns to "save the compressor". If the compressor is up to the job it doesn't need that "protection", and that puts the airguns at greater risk. If you own a tank it probably makes sense to use it.

I bought my Daystate LC-110 compressor from Airguns of Arizona, and they have been good. I found a lot of helpful posts from a Coltri dealer in Washington on many forums and he has been very helpful with replacing the missing filter tower and tubing with a factory Coltri unit. It costs a bit more than using an aftermarket filter, but fits right into the mounts built into the compressor, and it uses the filter cartridges which are available from many sources that are standard for the Coltri. There are several choices of filter cartridge that can be fitted, depending on the use of the air. I'm using the molecular sieve cartridge (for water and a few other things), not the breathing air cartridges that have two or three different types of filtration within them. Using a third party molecular sieve filter would also be a reasonable choice. Many others have gone that route, and there are many articles on the forums about that.

Search the internet for things like "filtering high pressure air", there's a lot of material available in these and other forums. I'm not a compressor expert but I have learned a great deal by looking for information on it.
 
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When we compress air 200 or 300:1 the humidity gets multiplied by that same factor regardless of the compressor - be it hand pump or low cost import or top of the line commercial machine. So unless your initial humidity is way below 1% the output air is going to be saturated with water vapor at 100% humidity.

The heating of the compression process produces warm or even hot air, so it has increased water vapor capacity. It must condense some moisture as it returns to ambient temperature in tank or gun.

Click to expand...

Compressing air to 300 bar reduces the air volume to 299/300ths of it's original volume. It also reduces the airs ability to hold water by 299/300ths. Water shed during the compression process is picked up by the condenstation tower in the LC-110 (I own one from AOA as well, great compressor!). I don't think compressed air can hold more water than uncompressed air. Outside of Grade D breathable air I don't believe additional filtration on the LC-110 is needed. The condensation tower does its job.

I believe folks have run many months (nearly half a year?) with the secondary filters and the indicator strips have never changed color... which means... it isn't necessary? I also believe an aluminum lined carbon fiber tank would need to be super saturated to fail hydro due to over compression over the years?

Thoughts/disagree? There's a ton of talk about failed compressors but not a lot about water ingress from hand pumping directly into guns with no intake filter.
 
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Only liquid water is caught by the separator, vapor goes right on through. The amount of vapor is a function of temperature and pumped volume.

I've been writing software to model the water vapor into the filter to see how various things affect it's life. I took apart a Coltri filter cartridge and measured the saturated Sieve material and calculated it to be about 60g when dry. It holds a little over 20% by weight of water, so about 12g of water capacity or a bit less than half an ounce of liquid water. One gram of water is one cubic centimeter, a pretty noticeable quantity of water to condense onto a surface. The following study (table below) shows the quantity of water that will build up in the filter (or go into the tank if there's no filter) for filling a 72 cubic foot SCBA tank at various temperatures. The temperature is of the air coming out of the oil/water separator which depends on ambient temperature plus some differential said to be 20 or 30 F depending on the compressor cooling. If the temperature rise is 30F then reading the 100F line in the table the filter would be 15% consumed by a single fill. With a compressor in the garage on a hot day (like my garage right now) it shows as much as 24% filter capacity consumed in a single fill. Topping off is much better for the filter. The back pressure makes the separator work better. But there is water vapor passing into the tank with every liter of air pumped. I suppose one could store the tanks at or above the temperature of the separator, then it would not condense. If it cools below that it will, at least partially, condense liquid water. I suppose the question remains as to how much water does it take in a tank to cause corrosion, I don't know the answer to that. I would think even one cubic centimeter would wet the aluminum over a fairly large area, and I have read that corrosion at high pressure occurs more quickly and can go through the aluminum. My goal is zero condensation. There will be some vapor, but no liquid water.

As I understand it, during a hydro test the operator removes the valve from the tank and uses a light to look inside the tank. If they see corrosion they are instructed to condemn the tank. I did come across at least one report of that happening. I suspect that most people with filterless home compressors have not had tanks hydro tested since they got the compressors, and that we may see more tank inspection issues as the 5 year cycles hit. And how many home compressor users are skipping their hydro testing?

The most important factor is the temperature environment of the compressor. The dehumidifier only helps if it reduces the inlet humidity well below 1%. But operating the compressor in a cool environment reduces the water vapor capacity enormously. Also affecting this temperature is the temperature rise of the compressor. Hand pumps and shoeboxes are at the low end of the scale, and the LC-110 pumps faster than them but 3 times slower than a small 220V scuba compressor, reducing the temperature rise at the separator. An ice bath for the separator is tempting. But the filter reduces the water vapor content far more effectively. How much does it cost to cool the compressor's entire heatload?

The cost of an effective water vapor filter is pretty modest compared to a tank or airgun.

Having a PMV and moisture filter allows the compressor system to produce high pressure air that won't condense moisture in a wide set of circumstances. Waiting for that cold morning that is 30F cooler than the temperature you store tanks is just not very convenient. :)

I'm not certain this discourse belongs in a thread about the AV compressor failure, which was very high on my list during my compressor research due to the level of support they give for their product. Perhaps this sub-thread topic should be split off?

Temperature Study without PMV
Liters H2Og Filt% Start End Size DegF PMV Comment
2082 0.99 8.22 0 4500 6.80 80 0 Fill 72 CF SCBA
2082 1.34 11.13 0 4500 6.80 90 0 Fill 72 CF SCBA
2082 1.78 14.81 0 4500 6.80 100 0 Fill 72 CF SCBA
2082 2.16 18.03 0 4500 6.80 110 0 Fill 72 CF SCBA
2082 2.90 24.17 0 4500 6.80 120 0 Fill 72 CF SCBA


 
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