[wisp]

I need some help, my air compressor is driving me crazy, its a 5hp Husky upright. Here is a link to it on the Husky page

Does anyone have any idea how to quiet it down? Larger muffler, mabye enclose it, I cant move it outside though. At this point I have to do something, between it and the air mister, I can't hear any tool cutting sounds while its running. Here is a link to a 2.5mb video of some aluminum being cut with a 3/8" EM so you can hear just how noisy it is. Be sure to turn your speakers WAY up for the full effect.

You will need the free DivX Player to watch the clip.

I think my right ear may be bleeding....

[JPMach]

I have a 7hp four cylinder comp that was annoying me. I pit mine in a corner and then bought some noise absorbing foam from MSC with sticky back and stuck to the two walls bahind it. Also built a small frame screwed into the corner to hold two sheets of extruded foam on the other two sides. It helped quite abit but it could be better.
The neatest thing I saw at one company was they had built a little room for their comps with concrete blocks and filled the holes in the blocks with sand to absorb sound. You could actually here yourself think in that place. Plus they had storage up on top of it then.I think they had pipes run outside to for the inlet and blowoff lines.

JP

[DanOSB]

some people wrap it around with carpet.. (not from firsthand expereience and they said it helped a bit..

or you could build a small room for it.. and have a hole to outside or something and seal it up with styrofoam or something that way it will prevent sound.. a bit.. concrete blocks with sand sounds good but $$ and big job too..

[unterhaus]

I hate compressor noise. Ten years in a bike shop with an ancient compressor will do that to you.

I always wanted to build a noise cancelling setup for mine. Put it in a box with a big speaker, a big power amp driven by a microphone through a delay. Since the compressor runs at the same speed, it should be possible to set the delay so the previous compressor thump is cancelled by the speaker.

[ViperTX]

Build a room around it or move it outside to some enclosure.

[championp]

The last shop I worked at built a closet out of 2x4's and 1/2" plywood, with eggcrate foam on the inside. there was about 12" clearance around the entire compressor and a 8" ventilation fan going out the top. The top was about 18-24" over the highest part of the compressor. This totally did the trick. You could still tell when it kicked on but it was very muffled. Like maybe a car engind idling outside the shop. Also, the better you anchor it to the floor the less resonance you will get.

I am going to try it at my new shop in the next few weeks and I will post if I got it right or not.

[ViperTX]

unterhaus....nope don't work that way......noise cancellation works only at the location where the noise is being heard.....like where you are standing...so that would be where you direct the out of phase noise.....also note that noise cancellation works best on noise that is continuous....

[MrWild]

A lot of compressor noise comes from the inlets. As each pulse is drawn in a reed valve rattles and vibrates as the inrushing air moves it. For a low effort fix that may work good enough, you might try to fit a muffler to the intake or a make up a prefilter chamber. I recently bought a Puma V-twin air compressor about the same size as your Husky. It is much quieter out of the box than the half horse compressor it has replaced. It also has nice enclosed intake filters.

[wisp]

A lot of noise does come from the air inlet/filter/muffler. If I lay a red shop rag over the inlet hole in the muffler, it gets considerably quieter. I wonder if you could connect a hose to the inlet hole, and run the hose outside, would it get the noise level down some....

Has anyone ever seen a hose or other type of remote air intake on a compressor? I think mabye a remote air intake combined with an enclosure made with some type of noise resistant panels might do the trick. My only worry is heat build up inside the enclosure, but how could you vent the enclosure without letting a ton of noise escape?

[ger21]

Come listen to the 50HP compressor in our shop and you'll think yours is quiet.
http://www.gardnerdenver.com/GDCorpP...ute=to&id=1079

[Caprirs]

For what it's worth, the less expensive compressors from Sears, Home Depot, Harbor Freight, etc. are louder because the pumps turn at higher speeds. The industrial units typically cost more because they use a bigger pump turning fewer revolutions.

Best solution is to build a box/room/closet around it but be careful that you don't bake the poor thing in it's own heat.

[whateg01]

For what it's worth, the less expensive compressors from Sears, Home Depot, Harbor Freight, etc. are louder because the pumps turn at higher speeds. The industrial units typically cost more because they use a bigger pump turning fewer revolutions.

Best solution is to build a box/room/closet around it but be careful that you don't bake the poor thing in it's own heat.

I don't know which has more of an effect, the higher speed or the fact that these less expensive "oil-less" compressors do not use oil as lubrication. Instead they use a teflon coating on the piston or the cylinder wall. I would think that the higher speed combined with the lack of damping that oil would provide probably conspire to make much more noise.

I previously had a small Makita Makair compressor with twin tanks mounted one-above-the-other next to the pump/motor assembly. That thing was loud, no matter what was done. When I purchased a Husky 60 gal compressor from Home Depot, I was amazed at the side-by-side noise comparison.

Just my 2.5 cents.

Dave

[cbass]

I don't know if its true or not but I don't think you can hear sound in outer space (which is a vacuum, right?). Maybe this is just a myth perpetuated by the movie Alien and its advertisement ("in space, nobody can hear you scream").

I did a quick search and ended up here...

http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/gmis9903.htm

So what about putting the compressor in a vacuum chamber? Could a compressor work in a vacuum?

Carlo

[ViperTX]

Only if the compressor had a air inlet outside of the vacuum chamber...also the vacuum would tend to want to such the oil out of the compressor.....

[miljnor]

not to mention heat You have to be able to get the heat out of the compressor or it will freeze up.

All the things that I have done to quiet a compressor.

1. reroute the Air intake.
This works but only for about 20% of the nosie. but its fairly cheap.
2. build an enclosure. probably the best overall solution.
Downside is heat you have to make sure you give the room some sort of ventilation.
The initial "room" i build was made of pvc pipe and tarping (worked supprisingly well) but if you want the best noise dampning you buy eggcrate foam and insulate the whole room with it. I actually did this to the first shop I had (1250sqft) made the place fairly quiet do to the sound absorbtion qualities of the foam. (hospitals also throw away huge amounts of this material so you can obtain it free (unless your a germ-O-fobe).
3. move it outside. cheapist of the options (unless someone steels your compressor) and you stated you couldn't do it.
4. Buy a new rotory screw compresser (you almost cant tell its on, until the damn water bleed goes off and blows your eardrums out! )

I had an oiless compressor when I first went into business and that lasted 1week before I went and droped some money on a larger piston compressor (thumper). No one likes to be next to those oiless compressors when the go off!

[artifacture]

I know this thread is old, but the problem is not one to go away. I didn't find a lot to go on when solving the problem myself, so wanted to share my solution. It is unique in that it is an enclosure but it maintains sufficient ventilation to keep the equipment cool while preventing a significant amount of the noise from escaping.

http://www.artifacturestudios.com/blog/archives/985

[Tristar500]

I solved my compressor noise in two ways. (It's a brute, 80 gallon, 5 HP 220 VAC)

1 Moved the unit from my basement workshop out to the garage. (Can't hear it at all anymore)

2. During a move I lost the air filter and cover off the compressor. I ran it that way substituting a rag over the air intake as a makeshift air cleaner (at least keep the big chucks out).. One day I found the missing filter and cover and WOW what a diff! Noise was cut in half just by having the proper filter and cover on it.

[diecutter]

I solved my compressor noise in two ways. (It's a brute, 80 gallon, 5 HP 220 VAC)

1 Moved the unit from my basement workshop out to the garage. (Can't hear it at all anymore)

2. During a move I lost the air filter and cover off the compressor. I ran it that way substituting a rag over the air intake as a makeshift air cleaner (at least keep the big chucks out).. One day I found the missing filter and cover and WOW what a diff! Noise was cut in half just by having the proper filter and cover on it.

I moved my Sears 33 gallon oil less compressor to the garage like you did and it also solved the problem. But it's so noisy you can still hear it go on when you are in the basement.