Rob,
That sounds complicated and a bit above my pay grade. I am sure if i was so mitivated i could figure it out but man imdid not u derstand the audimated blast gates would be such a project.?
The plumbing of the?air lines i expected and am not worried about. I?was wondering how the blast gates?get wired up to either a autostart or remote start.?
I guess if i am going to do this it would be nice if i could wire my machines somthat when i push the start button of my Felder machines the blast gate opens and the dust collector fires up.
If you do that writs u i would be interested as i have a good friend whom is very smart. He is way into computers, code, programing so forth and so on and understands electronics a bit also. He is actually a MIT grad that ended up a builder. Nope i dont quite understand that one except that its in his blood. His father was a carpenter, his grandfather was a carpenter so forth and so on.
Anyway, what do people do for remote or auto start on their Felder single phase?dust collectors. Or do most have three phase and use the adapter plug thing Felder sells.
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Without taking this thread too far off track, I thought I¡¯d respond to the original poster¡¯s question regarding pneumatic blast gates.? ??
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I¡¯m using the Nordfab SD and NFES blast gates, which are pneumatically powered, and am very pleased with them.?? The air is provided by the quiet Cal Air Tools 2HP, 10 ga. ?(the 10200C) that Brian Lamb had originally suggested, and that was recommended by a number of people earlier in this thread.?? This compressor can only supply 5.5 CFM at 90 psi, but that is adequate to operate the blast gates (one at a time, at least).?? ??A 1/8¡± polyurethane tube is home run from each gate to a manifold (mounted on one wall of the shop), and then to the compressor via ?¡±? copper pipe.?? My only complaint about the set-up is that there is enough air leakage in the system ¨C probably at the push connectors used with the tubing ¨C that the compressor has to turn on about every half hour ?even when the system is quiescent. ??A larger tank would help with this, of course.
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Now while the Nordfab blast gates are powered pneumatically, they are controlled electrically by a solenoid attached to the pneumatic valve in the gate.?? When the solenoid is powered, air is routed to one end of a cylinder whose piston rod closes the gate;? when the solenoid is not powered, a return spring in the valve causes air to flow to the other end of the cylinder, which forces the gate to open.?? These solenoids operate either on 120VAC, or 24VDC, depending on the model.? ?The gates are very expensive, but I was lucky enough to have found a bunch of used ones on eBay for about $200.00 each?? (though I had to replace a couple of the cylinders at about $75.00 a pop).
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I built and programmed a dedicated computer system that I¡¯ve been intending to write up, that maintains all the gates closed when no machine is running, and which opens the gate for a given machine when a current sensor senses that the machine has been powered on.?? This works really well ¨C I don¡¯t have to bother to open or close the gates, and have the luxury of mounting the gates at ceiling level (9¡¯ in my case) which is optimal for the cyclone.?
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-????????? Rob
