Preface
The purpose of this book is to provide a basic understanding of the com�pressed air systems, equipment, and technologies that are available onthe market today. You might have many years of experience with a spe�cific compression system, but the catalogs and sales literature just aren’t providing you with the information you need. Maybe you’ve just been
assigned the compression system as part of your and you
have no experience whatsoever with this type of equipment. Oftentimes,the compressors are the bastard child of a company’s capital equipment and no one in particular is responsible for them. If you head up the
company’s maintenance department, the compressors probably fall
under your responsibilities. You may be a salesman who works with pneumatic-powered equipment and, from time to time, are asked to comment on your customer’s compression systems. In any case, this book will give you the baseline information that will allow you to make well-informed decisions about specifying, expanding, or assessing a com�pression system
Like many technical people, I felt that I had a clear conceptual under�standing of air compression, I mean, what’s to know? You suck in some air, you smash it into a tank. Simple! I even built an air compressor from
an old auto AC pump and a piece of pipe when I was in high school. In the early days of my career whenever I had to deal with air com�pression, I was bombarded with a myriad of information from all sorts
of manufacturers and dealers, which, in most cases, seemed contradic�tory. I was forced to rely on the advice and the expertise of sales people and factory technical support, whose primary job was to sell their com�pany products. Like almost anyone that is placed into that position,I generally selected the cheapest solution that was presented to me and in doing so, my employers and I slowly got a very costly education in air
compression
As it turns out, buying the least expensive alternative is rarely the right decision in the world of compressed air. When using price as your primary criteria, you generally wind up with a system that is inadequate for your needs and, invariably, are forced to spend much more money down the road than if you had just purchased the right equipment in
the first place. I can tell you from actual experience, your boss doesn’t
want to hear “We need to buy a second air compressor, because the one
we just got isn’t big enough.” This can really put you in a spot. Similarly,
if you’re a salesperson, you really don’t want your customer calling you
up 3 months after you sold him a system and hear “The motor on the
compressor burned up this morning. What’s the deal? You said that this
compressor was big enough.”
I’m not suggesting that you need to be a compression engineer to properly select an air compressor. However, a cursory understanding of air compression and the basics of the equipment will arm you with
enough information so that you can ask the right questions. This will allow you to sift through all the information that you will receive and make reasonably informed decisions for your specific application. This
will also have the added advantage of keeping you from looking com�pletely incompetent in the eyes of your boss or customers.
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