Airtec Filtration Ltd.'s oil free division Ztechnique has recently completed a major 80,000-hour overhaul in South Africa on an Atlas Copco ZR5

“The customer has inherited the machine from its USA plant, a 60HZ version gearbox powered by a 50HZ motor and had the dilemma of repair or replace the equipment.”. - David Hatch Asia Support Engineer.

The compressor utilised an outdated capacity control and was significantly down on output (CFM). Ztechnique supplied a service exchange overhauled gearbox with a 50HZ gear set from the UK with new Ztechnique stage 5 & 3 elements (LP and HP compression stages)
Ztechnique supplied standard load no load piping to remove the capacity control and a MK4 Elektronikon** with SPM monitoring has been installed to upgrade the electro pneumatic control.

The ZR5 has been overhauled to the manufacturers 80,000-hour overhaul recommendations.
Savings of more than 30% have been achieved during this work when compared to OEM pricing of major components


The compressor had been neglected over many years previously, requiring the supply of new cooler housings and Ztechnique cooler cores, plus refurbished oil and bleed coolers.

‘The fact we could supply so many items as described above significantly reduced the onsite labour requirement for the customer.’

The noise reduction canopy and the inlet silencer which is often neglected on these type of oil free compressors was fully refurbished along with all water, oil and control pipe work to put the machine back to a standard load/unload control compressor.
In summary the customer now has the correctly functioning compressor, fully overhauled to a high standard and most importantly this was carried out for far less than the cost of a replacement oil free compressor of a similar output.

The customer requested all new piping to ensure no oil or water leaks would appear from old pipework….
‘Our Ztechnique service and parts was noted by the customer to be considerably less than the OEM quotation and carried out in a timely manner.’
The customer has expressed his intention to not only overhaul further oil free Atlas Copco compressors on site, but to also add a proven Ztechnique VSD conversion providing up to 60% turndown on a further Atlas Copco ZR5 compressor.


Considering that the OEM states that this equipment is now increasingly obsolete* we have proven that we can overhaul and service the ZR5 compressor for many more years in the future.

We look forward to being of continued service to this and other oil free customers in South Africa in the coming years.