"Bryan Martin" wrote in message
...
in article , Tim Ward at

wrote on 9/17/03 11:08 PM:

I dunno beans about air compressors, so maybe someone else can
explain it to
me:
The usual wall circuit is 15 Amperes, times 120 volts peak is 1800
watts.
746 watts in a horsepower, so how do you get 4.5 HP out of a wall
socket?

Tim Ward


You would run a 30 Amp, 120 Volt circuit with a 30 Amp receptacle.
Most
likely this compressor can be wired for 240V by moving some jumpers in
the
motor then you could run it on a 15A, 240V circuit. By the way, the
nominal
voltage for an AC system is given in RMS voltage not peak.


If it's 4 CFM and 30 Amps at 120 Volts, then the crankcase must be
filled with used oil and wood chips. ;-)

If you check some of HF's other ads, you'll see that they have similar
compressors with similar output that are rated at 2 hp (only inflated a
little). The 4.5 hp thing is just something some ad weenie thought he'd
try to see if Sears would notice and call with a better job offer.

I like HF, but some of their ad writers are goofy. My favorite was the
caption for the little combo lathe/milling machine which for years read
"every plumber needs one". For what? Making all those short pieces of
pipe with straight threads? For his night job as a master machinist?

For yuks I just picked up the topmost HF catalog from my stack of 17 (I
threw out the ones from last week). I knew there'd be something
brainless on the cover. Sure enough, a $70, 600W inverter featuring the
"latest sine-wave technology" that can run "compressors" and "toasters"
among other things. Certainly you need the latest sine waves for
toasters. :-)

Wayne