AlanB

I realize that this is obvious and you are probably set on operating 3 phase but it occurs to me that if this was the only 3 ph equipment in my shop and my power was limited to single phase, I would just buy a 15hp single phase motor with suitable pulleys to produce desired speed and forget fooling with phase converters or the cost of adding 3 phase power to the shop. No? Here's a 10hp single phase compressor duty 1750rpm from Northern Tools for $850 http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200381915_200381915 (you might not get much more than 10hp from a 3ph 15hp running on a converter)

Here are pics of the roller control valve and the main slide valve. You can see the homemade body of the actuator for the roller control valve that I fabricated to replace the crappy broken plastic one that it came with. I'll bet that is what happened to yours and the owner just took a different tach to solve the problem. Let me know if you need more detailed pics of this assembly and I'll take some more.

Yes, I'm using all 3/4" fittings, since that keeps the airway equal to or above 1/2" everywhere. This is emphasized in the operator instructions. When I first got my hammer (in 2003) it was having a problem with the control valve and after much back and forth with Bullhammer, they sent a replacement, which was from an earlier design. It seems mine was a new style they had newly incorporated, but it wasn't doing the job for me. It wasn't too long after I installed the replacement that it's plastic actuator housing cracked and I really didn't want to deal with their customer service again. So I fabricated a replacement piece out of steel and it has been working fine ever since. By the way, I found my operation and maintenance instructions and have scanned them into a PDF, which I will attempt to attach to this post. It's about 4MB so hopefully its not too big. ... looks like it uploaded okay. I just tried to upload an image of the roller valve but got an error -200. Probably means I've exceeded the file size allowed for images. I'll try at a lower resolution in a separate post. BULLHAMMER.pdf

I realize that this is obvious and you are probably set on operating 3 phase but it occurs to me that if this was the only 3 ph equipment in my shop and my power was limited to single phase, I would just buy a 15hp single phase motor with suitable pulleys to produce desired speed and forget fooling with phase converters or the cost of adding 3 phase power to the shop. No?

Congrats! That's a fine hammer, though I can't say much for their customer service. I bought mine new, probably 10 years ago now. 1) Oil should be supplied by continuous mist, not heavier than SAE 10W non-detergent motor oil, no additives, no synthetics, not anything but straight oil. 2) The hammer comes from the factory set to work best at 140-150psi needing 15-30cfm. Also, very important that you have at least 1/2" line and 3/4" fittings from your compressor because this baby gulps lots of air in bursts of over 100cfm. In fact, what I did to make it perform better was put a 10 gal. bladder tank right next to my hammer, after the inline filter/drier/regulator/oiler assembly. 3) I just played with the linkage adjustments until I got it behaving the way I wanted. I've got the operators "manual" somewhere, if you want I'll see if I can find it and scan it for you. My compressor has a 30gal horizontal tank with a 12hp Kohler gas engine and 2-stage pump. I run it at 175psi and set the inline regulator to 150psi. Moisture is kind-of a problem, even with the drier, but the bladder tank does dual duty, actually helping by acting as a final stage condenser. before adding the extra tank, the pneumatic valve sounded like it had a sinus condition at times. Also, I do not have any quick disconnects or anything that would constrict the air line to less than 1/2" dia. and I've got 3/4" hose connecting everything. -Alan-