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  1. #31
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    Bob if you rotate that assembly 90º clockwise and spread the tubes enough so they zig zag down with a bit of slope you'll only need a single trap and valve at the end.

    It could also be mounted under a ceiling or shelf as long as the outlet was sloped down from the inlet several degrees so the water would run to the trap.

    No cutting and fewer fittings for either.

    Pete

  2. #32
    BobL is offline Member: Blue and white apron brigade
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    Quote Originally Posted by QC Inspector View Post
    Bob if you rotate that assembly 90º clockwise and spread the tubes enough so they zig zag down with a bit of slope you'll only need a single trap and valve at the end.
    Good idea.

    It could also be mounted under a ceiling or shelf as long as the outlet was sloped down from the inlet several degrees so the water would run to the trap.
    As it so happens I had a look outside the shed and there is an area of outside wall which could be used,
    X marks the spot and the arrow shows the compressed air line coming out of the compressor enclosure.

    IMG_3535p.jpg

  3. #33
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    Happy to give something back.

    Pete

  4. #34
    BobL is offline Member: Blue and white apron brigade
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    I had another look at the heat exchanger and an a bit wary about instigating cracks in the bends when stretching out the shape. I will ask my mech engineer BIL who gave it to me about its pressure rating. It comes from a solar HWS he and a colleague invented. I might try annealing the bends and see how easy it is to stretch out, if it's still remains under tension to stretch it out I probably wont use it.

  5. #35
    BobL is offline Member: Blue and white apron brigade
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    Following on from QCI's idea . . . . . .

    I finally managed to contact the Solar Engineer BIL who gave me this heat exchanger a few years ago and he said when new this finned copper tubing was rated at 25 bar so I figured running at 8 bar might be OK.
    Cufinmedpipe3.jpg

    I plugged one end up and connected it to the compressed at 8 bar and turned the air pressure on remotely - no bang, and pressure stayed good for 5 days.

    Then I had to see if the 180º rounded corners would bend back apart to create angled horizontal runs - no problem (see below) I could bend them by hand more than enough.

    The I needed to bend the short section marked with the red arrow through 90º so it was no longer bent.
    There was no way this could be bent easily so I heated the corner with a propane torch and then stuck a 300 mm long steel bar partially down inside tube and it bent easily enough.

    Mounting on the outside wall of the shed was tricky because side on the heat exchanger was quite floppy so I made up some temporary brackets/spacers to hold everything at the right angles. I had found these beaut little pipe wall offsets in my stash that were made for 19mm pipe (the 1/2" pipe plus fins makes the ID of the heat exchanger pipe 23mm) but there was enough meat in the green plastic material to allow for a 23 mm opening to be drilled.

    Red arrow in this one shows where compressed air line enters shed.
    CUpipe1.jpg

    View the other way. You can just see the compressor enclosure and the red arrow in this one points to a temporary manual drain.
    I will replace that with some sort of a solenoid I can activate inside the shed although it might be easier to allow any water to drain back into the tank as this already has an automated solenoid on it. Think I might need something different though.
    CUpipe2.jpg

    Haven't had time to test it though - did some chainsaw work for youngest bro this morning and I'm stuffed.

  6. #36
    BobL is offline Member: Blue and white apron brigade
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    Default Traps for newbies.

    Last year I recharged (heated in an oven for 30 minutes) the desiccant in the comp air Humidity trap about every two months and it kept working although I was noticing a slow but steady degradation in the comp air humidity levels. When I broke my ankle late last year (6 weeks to get diagnosis) I was then stuck in a moon boot and I had to keep elevated for 7 weeks, shed work stopped - I turned every thing off and it took me a while to get back into the shed.

    When I got back into the shed and turned everything back on I did not notice the compressor auto vent system had stopped working. I kept using the compressor and eventually noticed the humidity of the compressed air was effectively the same as the outside air. First thing was to repair the auto vent system - the Real time clock module has vibrated its way out of its socket- and a cup of water came pouring out of the vent before the desiccant (must put a manual tap on that as well) - opening up the desiccant trap I found it the moisture abasing gel was bight green (should be brown orange - see below) and almost dripping with water.


    Humidity measurements in compressed air-600gsigel3-jpg

    So back into the oven for a recharge - all good.
    However, when I put it back the comp air humidity was nowhere near as good as it had been last year. Back into the oven for a longer - hotter bake - still not much better!!! I did it a couple of more times - still no good

    The other day I realised that the white poly sediment filter inside the humidity trap that prevents the SiGel beads from being blown down the comp air line (see orange arrow above) had never been dehumidified. Being poly it can't be cooked really hard in an over but I baked for a couple of hours at 75ºC and it certainly did make a big difference - still not quite as low an air humidity as when the poly filter was new but much better than before.

    I'll try a longer time and maybe 5-10º warmer bake to see what that does.

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