Caleb Pontius of Boss Industries LLC promotes the company’s new geared airend, part of the New Product Spotlight at the 2019 Work Truck Show.Photo: Keith Norbury
A new airend from Boss Industries LLC measures about 70 pounds lighter and a half foot shorter than the model it replaces.
The new airend accomplishes that by eliminating a third-party gearbox that had been part of the earlier model, said Caleb Pontius, vice-president of sales for Boss, during an interview at the Work Truck Show in Indianapolis this March.
“It’s been a very good product for us,” Pontius said of the earlier design. “But it adds weight, it adds cost, and it adds length to our footprint.”
Boss asked the airend manufacturer to design a gear set that could be incorporated into the airend itself. Not only does the new airend have a smaller footprint, it has four gears instead of six, which means less noise.
“And the airend is actually lubricating the gear set. You don’t have a separate lubrication, a separate maintenance point as well,” said Pontius, whose company is headquartered in LaPorte, Ind. “So quite a few benefits with just the one simple design change. It’s going to make our fleets much happier.”
A rotary screw compressor, an airend sucks in fresh air and compresses it in order to run high-performance tools such as jack hammers. In addition to producing 185 cubic feet per minute of air, this particular airend also incorporates a 10-kilowatt generator on the gear set.
The airend, part of the Work Truck Show’s New Product Spotlight, could “absolutely” be installed on a mechanics truck or service truck and used to power tools like impact wrenches, Pontius said.
“This air is probably more that most mechanics would use but cfm is friendly,” he said. “If you don’t need it, it doesn’t care. It’s providing the volume but if the tool doesn’t need it, it doesn’t pull it.”
For mechanics truck, for example, the price of the airend is competitive with the combined price of a generator and compressor.
“This kind of air is for bigger tools but we do have mechanics who use this as well.”