Compressor blowing spike fuses or melting spikes

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by de_

Out of spec excessively tight clearance between the compressor piston and cylinder wall could increase current draw but since nobody else has seen this and since the compressor seems to be starting and running fine, that doesn't look likely.

This compressor uses a "wobble" technology in that the piston and rod are one piece so that the piston head actually wobbles as it is moved by the crank. The seal is flexible and so the piston to wall clearance is fairly big (i.e. on the order of hundredths as opposed to thousandths of an inch.)

A 30 amp fuse violates the wiring rule and IFI requirements for the Spike, sorry.

[de_]

Just to let you know, we changed to the circuit breaker and (probably) did not have any more problems with the compressor. However (in spite of continous maintenance efforts) we suffered from an increasingly severe lack of air pressure, most likely due to a leak in a internal seal in (one or more) SMC solendoids.

We have not way to prove if the circuit breaker ever tripped during the matches but so far we cannot find any evidence of it. The one spike whose case melted around a terminal and the terminal was found to be no longer soldered to the printed circuit board was likely a poor (high resistance) soldering job in manufacturing as nothing else seems to explain it.