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I would recommend you call Eric Z and ask him to clarify the design parameters and compromises of the Rix because you clearly won't believe anything that I have to say. Reliability and field serviceability are high priorities and I was not questioning those, longevity is not something they are often concerned with. The design engineer I talked to was at a conference many years ago and he has since retired.
All you have to do though is look at the scheduled maintenance on these things compared to something like a Bauer to realize that they are designed for completely different things.
50 hours to lubricate bearings, 200 hours to replace the third stage piston vs a comparably sized Bauer that has it's first valve replacement at 2000 hours on it's PM schedule. I don't appreciated you putting words in my mouth saying that they're running on the ragged edge of failure, which they are not. They are running at the maximum safe speed at the sacrifice of longevity in order to give the military the smallest package possible. That interval on a SA6 is 15k cf of gas before you have to lubricate. That's a LOT of gas, and for a compressor that was designed to go on a zodiak and be small, portable, and durable, and that was more than long enough since they were intermittent duty. Go out on a couple missions, come back and lube everything, happy days. Something like 50k cf for the third stage, that's several years for what they were doing. For something sitting in a fire department or dive shop where 200 hours goes by REALLY fast, it gets expensive.
All you have to do though is look at the scheduled maintenance on these things compared to something like a Bauer to realize that they are designed for completely different things.
50 hours to lubricate bearings, 200 hours to replace the third stage piston vs a comparably sized Bauer that has it's first valve replacement at 2000 hours on it's PM schedule. I don't appreciated you putting words in my mouth saying that they're running on the ragged edge of failure, which they are not. They are running at the maximum safe speed at the sacrifice of longevity in order to give the military the smallest package possible. That interval on a SA6 is 15k cf of gas before you have to lubricate. That's a LOT of gas, and for a compressor that was designed to go on a zodiak and be small, portable, and durable, and that was more than long enough since they were intermittent duty. Go out on a couple missions, come back and lube everything, happy days. Something like 50k cf for the third stage, that's several years for what they were doing. For something sitting in a fire department or dive shop where 200 hours goes by REALLY fast, it gets expensive.