Atlas Copco's GA-series rotary screw compressors are run by the Elektronikon controller family, and the generation on your machine decides what a fault looks like. The Elektronikon II regulator is the button-and-LCD unit on GA machines from the late 1990s and 2000s, including the Full-Feature (FF) packages with a built-in refrigerant dryer and the water-cooled variants. The Elektronikon Mk 5 is the graphic-display generation that followed. Current GA 30+ to GA 90 machines carry the Elektronikon Touch colour touchscreen. Variable-speed machines add a drive layer on top: the GA 37 VSD and GA 45 VSD with the Elektronikon Graphic controller relay converter alarms in hexadecimal (0x1111, 0x2312, 0x2314), GA VSD packages with an integrated drive show F-codes (F020, F023, F006/F011), and the newer GA VSD+ with the Neos inverter uses alphanumeric codes such as A017.
How to read the display. The Elektronikon rarely shows a bare number. It names the sensor, shows the live reading, and adds a tag beside the programmed limit: Shd is a shutdown, Shdw is a shutdown warning that the reading is approaching the trip level, and *Serv Requir* means a service-plan timer or a monitored input has passed its limit. Nominal trip points on GA machines put the element outlet warning around 110 °C and the shutdown around 120 °C. Warnings clear themselves once the condition goes away; shutdowns latch until you fix the cause and press reset. On the Touch controller many faults read as plain conditions with relay designations, so "Motor overload relay (F21) open" is the same kind of message as an older "Overl Fanmotor". Before you reset anything, step through the Status data menu and write down every flagged reading. That snapshot is what a technician will ask for first.
What is safe to do yourself. Most Atlas Copco shutdowns in the field are heat: room ventilation, dirty coolers, low oil. Those checks are operator work and each code page lists them in order. Most of the rest live in the electrical cabinet or the drive, where the instruction book itself says qualified personnel only, and the emergency stop does not make the machine voltage-free. The pages below keep that line.
Every message in the tables below links to its own page with the documented meaning, the machines that show it, the likely causes, the checks you can make in-house, and the point where it becomes a service call. Each page cites the Atlas Copco instruction book it was verified against.
Five Atlas Copco codes to know first
- Element Outlet — Shd (shutdown) (Atlas Copco GA series (Elektronikon II regulator, GA18-GA90 / GA VSD)): Compressor element outlet temperature shutdown.
- *Shutd Warn* / Element outlet — Shdw (Atlas Copco GA series (Elektronikon II regulator)): Shutdown warning — element outlet temperature high.
- *Serv Requir* (Atlas Copco GA series (Elektronikon II regulator)): Service warning — service plan or input level exceeded.
- Emergency Stop (Atlas Copco GA series (Elektronikon II, Mk 5 and Touch controllers)): Emergency stop activated.
- Motor overload relay (F21) open (Atlas Copco GA 30+-90 / GA 37+ (Elektronikon Touch)): Main motor overload — compressor does not start or stops.