Measure the Hose I.D. – that’s the size of the air hose

Not all manufacturers manufacture their compressed air hose to the same outside diameter as another company’s hose.

Can you remember where you HID the hose?

If you remember the acronym HID, and that it stands for “hose I.D.”, this will help you remember that air hose size is measured on the inside diameter not the outside.

It doesn’t matter what the O.D. (outside diameter) of the air hose is, it’s the I.D. (inside diameter) that you need to know to get the correct air fitting.

More info? Check here.

Compressed Air Regulators

If your air circuit doesn’t have a regulator, or even a number of them, you should use them.

The air regulator can remove the air pressure wave caused by your compressor cycling on and off through it’s pressure range, by setting the regulator to a PSI that’s below the pressure level where the compressor cycles back on.

Using a regulator to keep the air pressure at it’s lowest possible setting for each air-consuming application, will allow you to extend the work performed by the very expensive-to-produce compressed air, as well.

Are you a sales agent in the U.S. or Canada?

Rantro Industrial Controls is owned by a friend of mine, and among other things, he designs and builds control panels.

Control panels for anything, PLC driven, or simple pneumatic logic.

If you are an agent with non-competing lines, and would like to acquire a potentially lucrative line, click the Rantro name. It’s a link to the appropriate page on his site.

Control element; the AND valve

Designing an air circuit can be complex, and having control elements available makes this a little easier.

One such control element is the AND valve which, when it receives two incoming control air signals from two sources, will then – and only then – transmit a control signal on to another power or control element in the circuit.

If either of the two incoming signals disappear, for any reason, the outgoing signal stops too.

Want more information?

Pulse A Control Signal

If you design pneumatically controlled circuits, it’s seems to be almost inevitable that you will encounter a control signal conflict. That’s when two or more control signals are latched on to the same control or power element, and as a result, the circuit stalls.

One solution is to take the time to design the air circuit to eliminate those conflicts.

Another, the easier route, is to use Pulse Valves in your control circuit.

The Pulse Valve catches an incoming air signal, and then transmits it, but only for a split second; enough air and duration to toggle a subsequent control or power element in the circuit.

The pulse decays almost immediately, meaning that one source of signal conflict is now gone.

When the signal that is incoming to the Pulse Valve is dropped, then it will reset itself to send on a pulse the next time it receives an incoming signal.

A Pulse Valve I have used over the years, with good success, was made by ARO. Simply put PR-10 into the search box found on this ARO web site page to get more information.

Keep the air circuit running.

If the air circuit is pneumatically controlled, how do you keep it running if the operator removes their finger from the spring actuated start button?

To have the circuit continue, once the button is pushed, the signal from that valve goes to a double air-actuated “latch” valve. The incoming signal shifts the valve and the circuit starts, even though the operator had released the actual start button.

In order to turn the circuit off, there needs to be a second button to send another signal to the other end of the “latch” valve, shifting it back, and stopping the air circuit.

Valve selection can be complex. Here’s more info.

How big an air cylinder?

You need a certain size cylinder to provide enough force to overcome the tooling load that you are trying to move.

Additional force is required to overcome part-to-part friction inside the air cylinder.

Piston seals and bearing seals will consume some of the strength available in a particular cylinder, so I tend to allow about 10% oversize when I’m selecting an air cylinder for a job, to ensure that I’ve got enough force to exceed the internal friction, and to do the job for which that cylinder was selected.

Additional information on sizing actuators is available here.

Where’s your lubricator?

If the lubricator is too far away from the item you are trying to lubricate, then oil may not ever get to it. Some lubricators aren’t capable of blending the oil and compressed air fine enough that it will actually carry through the air hose to the application.

For air tools, consider two or three drops of tool lubricating oil into the air port in the tool before you use it. Before you put the tool away, a couple more drops wouldn’t hurt. That should be enough oil for most tools.

If the application is air cylinders, then make sure that the lubricator is close to the valve that controls the cylinder, and the valve isn’t more than a meter, maybe two, from the valve, or else the oil just won’t be getting to the actuator.

Just starting out as an airbrush painter?

Yes, I know, money’s tight.

The difference between a lower cost unit and the top-of-the-line can be hundreds, if not more than a thousand dollars.

Yes, you may sacrifice some longevity in buying an inexpensive compressor. Yet, if you spend some of the money saved on good compressed air treatment equipment to remove oil and water, and if you shroud the compressor in a home-built box to reduce the noise level, in function the two compressors will end up the same; the capacity of each being equal, of course.

Click here: more information on airbrush compressors.

The compressed air filter comes before other components!

Modern compressed air treatment units (FRL’s) are now usually modular, or they can be nippled together.

Ensure that when you assemble an FRL unit to treat your compressed air, that you make sure that the air travels through the filter before it arrives at other downstream components.

The filter will remove free water, and any airborne debris before it can get to and damage sensitive air-driven equipment.