Our offices are closed from the 21st December until 6th January.

How to Know When Your Industrial Air Compressor Needs Servicing

Even the sturdiest of equipment requires servicing, whether it’s routinely by law and regulation, when outside forces cause damage, or when the ravages of use slowly build up over time.

Knowing the telltale signs of wear and tear, understanding your product’s specifications and usability guidelines, and knowing when it’s prudent to call in repairs are skills that could save you a lot of time, effort, and money in the long term.

Service early

Ultimately, it’s always going to be a better idea to call in a service than it is to call in for repairs, especially for often core pieces of machinery such as air compressors that serve a multitude of applications.

By servicing early, you’re going to be gaining a lot of benefits over leaving a piece of machinery out until it breaks, or until it’s necessitated servicing time occurs.

Firstly, by calling in service when you spot signs rather than when you need it immediately, you’ll be able to tailor the timeline of repairs to suit you. Repair during times when you’ll need the equipment, rather than during times of high use, to maximise efficiency and lower possible downtime.

Secondly, you prevent the risk of total plant shutdown while you wait for core machinery to be repaired. A critical machine going offline can be a disastrous occurrence, especially during high workloads or in industries with strict, competitive deadlines to beat.

Thirdly, air compressors in particular work off efficiency. While a air compressor may be ‘working’ effectively, leaks and other routine maintenance-fixable things can use up 20-30% of your air flow, with an average of 19% across all tested. Over the first ten years of use, an air compressor’s initial capital cost and maintenance cost make up 18% and 7% of total expenditure, while energy accounts for a gigantic 73%.

By servicing early, you’ll cut down leaks that can reach as high as 40-50% loss, and reduce your overall expenditure down significantly. The better maintained, the larger reduction (for 7% average costs) you’ll get your leakage (0.2-0.3 of 72% energy costs).

Knowing the signs

First - Check your manuals

Firstly, it’s important to understand your air compressor. Check how long it recommends before servicing, as most petroleum-based compressors need changing every 500 hours or so, and synthetics around 2,000.

Alongside this, check your console regularly to see if any errors or issues pop up. This might sound simple, but it’s amazing how often such simple issues are overlooked.

It won’t matter how telltale the signs are if you don’t know the equipment you’re dealing with, or aren’t even checking your basic inbuilt warning signs often.

Excess moisture

Whenever an air compressor is running, it accumulates moisture that must be in some way reduced. If your compressor is producing excess condensation, it may be experiencing a fault in the automatic drain system.

Loud noises

Our compressors come with a sealed, in-built noise reduction chamber. If your compressor is beginning to make either:

Then you may either have a broken component rattling around, or a fault in the motor.

Frequent tripping breakers

Equipment tripping breakers can signify a multitude of things. Your first response should be to immediately check the electrical circuit powering the compressor, but if there’s no fault there and the system continues to trip breakers or blow fuses, you should have a serviceman or woman come immediately.

High loss of pressure, or low overall air pressure

If your compressor is reporting no air pressure, you more than likely have a reporting problem (unless you truly do have zero). Simply having low air pressure is a mark of either reporting issues, wear and tear on internal or external parts, or sometimes a simple technical issue.

Sometimes this can be easily fixed, but if there is no significant and easy to spot issue at hand, you’ll be racking up a huge amounts of losses in energy costs to keep it running without one.

On/off unresponsive

If you can’t get the air compressor working in the first place, odds are you’re not going to be able to get a good read on what’s wrong with it. The first thing to do is check the circuit and any obvious things, but again: if it’s not obvious, it might be time for a repair job.



Call an expert

If you’re experiencing any of these signs with your industrial air compressor, or just want to make sure that you're able to get the most efficient air compression possible, get in touch with us.

Who we are and how Ash Air can help your business!

Ash Air has been around in New Zealand since 1979, and we’ve grown into a nationwide company with international support and a reputation for quality and reliability.We look after all things compressed air for your business!

  • Reciprocating, Screw, air compressors
  • Vacuum pumps
  • Nitrogen
  • An extensive line of air treatment components

Ash Air's range of Chicago Pneumatic, Alup, Pneumatech, and Quincy compressors are used extensively around the world in industries ranging from oil and gas to food, automotive and farming, and we bring you these world class compressors here in the land of the long white cloud.Our technicians are compressed air equipment experts and are dedicated to addressing customer needs. Supported by a 13 locations nationwide, Ash Air offers one of the widest selections of compressed air equipment and parts available today in New Zealand.

Reliability and Efficiency

With Ash Air compressors, you can count on reliability and high performance for even the most demanding applications. We focus our efforts on the following:

  • Increasing uptime
  • Reducing unexpected repairs
  • Reducing energy consumption
  • Improving the cleanliness of compressed air


Read more from our #expertcorner

Talk to the team today:  CONTACT US CONTACT US


Just like any other equipment, a compressed air installation also requires the necessary maintenance work during its entire lifespan. Even though maintenance costs are only about 5 to 10% of a machine's annual operating costs, failure to budget for maintenance can have potentially disastrous consequences. …


The air dyer is one of the most ignored cooler in the system. A dirty condenser will cause water in the lines, or worse it will cause complete dryer failure. …


Using nitrogen is not about fully replacing CO2, but it can reduce their consumption of CO2 by close to 70%. Using nitrogen is about sustainability. Creating your own nitrogen is easy and will reduce the use of a greenhouse gas, which is better for the environment. It will also save you money as early as month one adding that savings to your bottom line. …


A question that is occasionally asked by our customers to Ash Air is 'what is the cost of compressed air?'  This article looks at the product costs involved with compressed air, as well as minimising the energy cost of compressors and cost allocation. When looking at these factors, we need to realise what causes dropped efficiency of your compressor, leading to increased costs of compressed air. …


You may have great fall protection measures in place to keep employees safe when working at height, but what about their co-workers below? Dropped tools and other falling objects are a major hazard – and one that isn’t always fully addressed.  …


Providing a safe working environment for operators is essential, especially when using pneumatic tools and compressed air. If there is a failure in the air network and the hose is not adequately clamped, the resulting whiplash could be devastating. Failure to follow best practice can result in injuries, associated production downtime and decreased productivity. …


A common questions asked is why do I need an air dryer for my compressor? Typically, air compressors produce water, and although the water can be drained, there can still be aerosol and vapour droplets that are present. This is because water cannoet be compressed. Water can damage your compressor by corroding the valves, pipes and machinery controls, which will cost you time and money to resolve. In the long run, the cost of a new compressor is a small price to pay compared to the loss of production that could potentially arise due to water damage in your compressor.





…


Air compressors can fail for an assortment of different reasons: Normal wear and tear, lifespan and age of the unit, poor maintenance, power surge, install issues are just a few the come to mind. Check out this blog to find out our top 7 tips to ensure your compressor is looked after!  …

Show More