Rotary Airends

Air Compressor Technology, Inc.

Air Compressor Technology, Inc. is the premier airend vendor in the United States with decades of expert performance and satisfied customers.  They can restore your airend or provide a remanufactured airend, on an exchange basis, for electric stationary and portable rotary screw and vane air compressors. This includes compressors manufactured by Champion^®, Compair^®, Gardner-Denver^®, Ingersoll-Rand^®, Joy^®, Kaeser^®, LeRoi^®, Quincy^®, Sullair^® and many others.

This service has proven to be a reliable and realistically priced alternative to factory exchange airends.  Customer feedback and independent research has found that their prices are consistently 40% to 50% below the prices from the OEMs.  And, every year they repair several airends that were declared unrepairable by the OEM or its distributor, saving customers from the having to buy a new airend or new compressor.  

Their commitment to helping customers has earned them a reputation for getting customers out of trouble with fast delivery.  This is possible because they have the largest inventory of airends and airend components in the industry. 

Thousands of their remanufactured airends are running today.  These units are being used in applications ranging from industrial plants to undersea exploration to NASA and the space program. 

Reconditioning Procedure

The following is a general procedure that would apply to all airends furnished by Air Compressor Technology, Inc..

The core airend is disassembled and the components boiled out in a Winona Van Norman parts cleaner.  The rotors and input shafts are micrometer measured for proper size. 

If not to tolerance (+/- .0002 inches), shafts are tig welded with a high tensile, low heat, machineable rod and returned to original size.  The rotors are carefully examined and any profile damage or deep scratches are repaired.  Rotor sealing strips are completely replaced if any portion had been scrubbed off during the airend failure.

The inlet and discharge bearing housings are checked for flatness and proper bore.  Any suspect castings are tested for heat cracks using a Magnaflux procedure.  If either the bearing bores or gas seal annulus had sustained damage, they would be bored and bushed back to size.  Any substantial damage to the bearing housing faces or cylinder casting would be repaired.

Special assembly fixtures and state of the art “SKF^® induction type bearing heaters” are used to prevent bearing damage.  All ball and cylindrical roller bearings are replaced using high quality machined brass cage bearings with proper internal clearances and preloads.  Tapered roller bearing machines are fitted with top quality OEM type bearings.  Rotor to housing clearances are set with OEM shims and checked manually.

A new OEM type shaft seal is installed and the airend painted.  The unit is spun up on a test rig to check for vibration, noise and leaks.  It would then be bolted to a skid or export crated for shipment.

Unique Services

Sealing Strip Replacement

An airend rotor designed with sealing strips suffers a dramatic loss of efficiency when these strips are scrubbed off during a catastrophic failure.  In addition to the loss of effective sealing between the rotors, the critical rotor to cylinder clearances may increase by a factor of ten or more. 

Air Compressor Technology, Inc. replaces the sealing strips which is the correct repair procedure.  Rebuilding such an airend without replacing these strips is like running an engine without piston rings.  “Grinding off the high spots”  simply will not do.

Replacement of Broken Rotor Shafts

Broken rotor shafts are replaced with heat treated stainless steel in all types of airend rotors.  The replacement shafts generally have tensile strengths 2 to 3 times stronger than the OEM material and are very tough.  The shafts are machined to OEM dimensions or to your specific needs.

They have successfully replaced shafts in hundreds of rotors in airends from 15 HP to 1000 HP.  Due to heavy side loads, they replace rather than repair, most badly damaged belt driven rotor shafts.  These replacement shafts do not break and will not come out with normal use.

Shaft and Keyway Repair

For those less dramatic shaft repairs, their ASME certified welders use tungsten and inert gas equipment for seal area, bearing and gear surface buildups.  They do not use spray welding or knurling as do some of their competitors.  Tig welding, although slower than mig or stick welding, offers better control of the heat affected zone normally responsible for shaft breakage next to a weld.

Casting Repairs

Air Compressor Technology, Inc. specializes in the repair of damaged castings with a combination of state of the art materials and the experience from years of casting manufacture and repair.  They have become highly proficient at disassembling seized airends without causing irreparable damage and completing casting repairs without warpage. 

Casting repairs vary from the relatively simple metal erosion repair to the more complex restoration of broken bearing housings.  They also repair cylinder scoring or erosion, which occurs when rotors push apart from each other during bearing failure. 

Replacement Parts

Drive Gear Sets – new and used OEM gears as well as quality aftermarket products are in stock for the commonly used airends.  This allows them to assemble a wide variety of exchange airends and meet customer delivery requirements. 

Shaft Seals and Sleeves – custom manufactured PTFE airend shaft seals and hardened stainless steel shaft sleeves are in stock.  “OEM or Better” quality at aftermarket prices.  Their inventory includes more than 250 different types and sizes of airend shaft seals in PTFE, Viton and high nitrile Buna-n as well as a wide variety of mechanical seals.

Bearings – high quality bearings with the proper preloads and internal clearances for hundreds of different rotary screw and vane airends are always in stock.  They only use top brand names that you can trust, and unlike some manufacturers, they never use bearings with plastic cages.

Rotary Vane Components – the components in stock for rotary vane compressors include drilled vanes, stainless steel shafts, vacuum relief valves and more.  They can also supply exchange end covers for several models of rotor stator units as well as complete exchange rotor stator units.

Contact Us

The airend exchange program at Air Compressor Technology, Inc. will make a positive impact on your bottom line.  The knowledge of this option also means you are no longer dependent on the OEMs. 

Send an email to airends@compressorwise.com if you want a quote on a remanufactured airend exchange for your rotary screw or vane compressor.  You can use the same email address if you have any questions.

 

 

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