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Posted by D Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 23:53:42 :
In Reply to: Air compressor posted by Mark [24.177.1.173] on Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 21:14:05 :
Along with Paul and Ron's good comments, a couple basic things to keep in mind are that tank (here we call it a "receiver") capacity determines how long you can use a given amount of CFMs before the compressor kicks on, whereas HP determines how quickly it recovers or conversely how often you have to stop and wait for it to recover. Even a small HP compressor can run a big tool for a little while with a small receiver or for a long while with a big receiver. On the other hand stopping to wait for it to recover gets frustrating. If you know how many CFMs your biggest tool draws, and you pick a compressor rated at that many or more CFMs, then you will never have to stop and wait for it to recover, but if you only use the big tool for short periods of time or infrequently, you might end up buying more compressor CFMs than you need.
As a rough guess, you would probably be happy with the 60 gallon, running one tool at a time. I have one about like you're describing and I've never had to wait for it to catch up, even when running the 1" truck wheel impact wrench.
"5 HP" is the most common large size home/shop type compressor because that's the most power you can get out of a 240 volt 20 amp single-phase circuit assuming 100% motor efficiency. Given that most motors are about 80% efficient, I suspect the "5 HP" rating is quite optimistic. Given the small physical size of the motors, I suspect their honest continual HP rating would come in at more like 2 HP. Once you get about 5 honest HP you're probably looking at 3 phase power.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you can always add more receiver capacity. If you stumble across a suitable tank, you can just plumb it into your system in any convenient place and you'll have that much more capacity. Obviously there are safety issues here, so don't use an old water heater that's almost rusted through, or some random container that's not designed to hold pressure.