Scroll Compressors - Sawmill Creek Woodworking Community

Like others have stated, they are designed for high volume air use, constant duty cycle. I have looked at them a couple different times as I own a shop and our compressor runs quite often. Every time the salesman steers me away from a screw compressor and more toward a high cfm piston pump with a large tank. For home use I have a flexzilla 220 volt 80 gallon compressor, noise level is very low as that is their selling point, very happy with it. I do have it in a utility room but can hardly hear it.

My service truck has a scroll style VMac compressor. It's a beast. It will maintain high air volume and pressure together. Because it's hydraulically driven it's not quiet. It does have a "warm up cycle" and will run for probably 15 minutes before shutting off. One of our shops has a scroll compressor. It is as said very quiet and maintains pressure effortlessly. Much of the time we use only small amounts of air. I'm not aware of any issues because of this. It's been in service for at least 10 years. It is maintained/checked regularly. There is no question that they can supply a large volume of air. I suppose it's a case of balancing your needs. They have been around for a long time. They have oil free units as well. Not arguing whether they are or are not acceptable for a home shop just that they have plenty of good points.

Do you mean screw compressor?

I used to use my neighbor's screw compressor and aside from the insane amount of CFM it produces at very low noise levels, I can't tell a difference. Compressed air is compressed air.

But they're also insanely expensive so if you can afford them, go for it. As for maintenance I don't know if they are more expensive than regular reciprocating compressor, but for low duty usage a reciprocating compressor of the right CFM is more than enough.

Neighbor use it for VMC's, but honestly they don't really need that much air, but they leak a lot so the extra cfm is needed to keep it running right.