so many people think air is air and that all air is created equal
however that may be true in some situations but not for Air Plasma systems
having to clean dry air can dramatically affect several things the main ones the cut quality and
the consumable life hi my name is rata sochenda and in this video I'm going to show you how I
went from this to this and show you how and why I built this clean dry air system for my shop
when it comes to the air produced by my air compressor it's most often that the air leads
to condensation and contaminants if left untreated it could travel through the air system and cause
problems especially for pneumatic tools whose performance relies on the quality of air delivered
in my case the hypertherm plasma cutter used on my CNC plasma table
because having clean dry air was fundamental to the machine's
productivity I set out to design and build an Air Supply system to support my needs
the goal for this air system one have a flexible configuration two have a clean organized layout
three I wanted to be reliable and low maintenance four support a 500 square foot shop
and five support future pneumatic systems with my goals in mind it was time to lay it all out in 3D
using my favorite 3D cab program SolidWorks my setup starts with a two-stage 60 gallon
air compressor to handle the demand for the plasma cutter it then goes into the shop to a five-stage
air desiccant filter that captures the moisture particles and oil before it goes into the dryer
then goes into the refrigerant dryer which cools the air even more and causes the water
to drip out of it I guess you can compare this to a dehumidifier used to dehumidify a room
air is then routed to an air manifold which then splits off to multiple Downstream machines
in this case one being my plasma machine
because my shop is less than 500 square foot I went with half inch copper pipe versus
three-quarter I think the half inch is more than adequate I know there are other piping
systems out there but I went with copper because the pipe was readily available and I like all the
plumbing supply options to choose from such as the type of fittings and ball valves once I have
the system built I'll go into more detail on the system sequence and the different configurations
with the design Direction established I ordered all my materials I would need
I'll leave resources and links in the video description for this air system diagram that
I've created and all the items I used in this video with that out of the way let's build this
the first thing I did was start connecting each filter using yellow gas tape and pipe sealant to
guarantee a leak-free system for air applications I prefer the yellow Teflon over the white because
I feel it offers a better durable seal and applying the pipes Inlet is just added insurance
at each end of the filter system I use Union fittings
this makes it easier to connect the pipes together while making it easy to disconnect if necessary
next was to use a whip hose to feed the air coming from the air compressor from the shed
I fed the half inch hose through a one inch flexible PVC conduit that then leads into the shop
I found out this to be the best flexible way to plumb the air from the outside shed into the shop
I did look into using galvanized and black pipe but I didn't want to worry about the maintenance
clear the conduit I trimmed out the black rubber piece from the whip hose
also the Flexzilla hose is ready for extreme temperatures and the PVC conduit will protect
it from the elements when buried in the ground I did have some concerns with the Sharp 90 degree
bands possible King of the hose but once the system was pressurized it wasn't an issue
next was to mount the filter system
Provide support I use some plywood to provide the back I needed to mount the air filter
I use my diagram as a cheat sheet to get each tube length and fitting required for each section
to clear the valves from the wall I offset the pipe using these Bell hanger mounts
they came in super handy to provide the clearance needed
and by no means am I a plumber but after watching a few videos on how to prep solder
pipe I decided to give it a go and I'm glad I did because I really enjoyed it
I think there's just something therapeutic about seeing the tin flow with the help of the flex
I'm also glad I had a table of ice to hold it while soldering because that stuff gets pretty hot
also one thing I do with the valves is take off the handles
when soldering so it doesn't melt the rubber on the handle
foreign
because I would be adding an air quarter reel in the near future I
installed the manifold block to help split the air when needed
to easily locate where it needed to be I did another dry fit of this section
and then pushed it back to see where the mounting holes would need to be
then took it back off to install the air coupler supplied plug screw and ball valve foreign
fully soldered in I opened up the valve at the air compressor
to check for leaks using soapy water I found two areas where it had to leaked
almost all the units leaked which I sort of anticipated because I wanted to see if I needed to
seal off the threads or not because theoretically they are supposed to be sealed at the face
the second area sort of surprised me the leak came from the screw handle of the ball valve once
I added a tape and some sealant to the leaking unions all was fine for the valve I just torqued
it down a bit and that seemed to do the trick last but not least to give it a clean look I spray some
WD-40 on a scotch fry pad and cleaned up the pipe not necessary but it gave it a professional look
all right so I got the plumbing all pretty much wrapped up um now I'm gonna kind of go over how
everything kind of works I'm showing what all the valves do and all the different configurations uh
so let's get into that real quick so the first thing I want to mention is the shed
with the air compressors on this other side of the wall so what ends up happening is you have
in incoming air that comes up and then uh how I set it up now is it's going to go up this way
around this Fab is open through the five stage air desk and filter system
then pretty much this valve is going to be closed because I'm going to have it go down
to the air dry air refruiting and dryer so let's open that up and that goes down this way over over
and then down and on the uh if you look at it there it's on the input side of the
refrigerant dryer which is this guy there and then this pipe here is the output so once the
air is dried it comes back up over this way and then we have to open up the valve this way
and then over down and have an air coupler so when I want to split off to like a a corded
reel I can do that but right now I have another valve uh that goes all the way down and this is
the primary reason why this setup is here is so that I can feed it up down and into my uh
back of my um hypotherm uh 65 PowerMax this is my plasma cutter for my CNC plasma table there
so pretty much the whole purpose is we're using the air filter the air dryer to fight
clean dry air for this uh plasma so that's the main configuration how I'm going to do it and
you're wondering well how come you have all these valves all these different pipes and why they
route it that way and the main reason is let's say I didn't want to use this air filter system
I can turn it off then that will block that board so then I'll just open up this port and
you follow that pipe the guy goes up up and around and I'll close the inlet and Outlet
valves for the dryer and then I'll actually open up this guy and right now I'm actually feeding
um direct air from the air compressor bypassing the air filter and the only reason why I set it
like that is let's say this thing takes a crap out a crap on me um I can bypass it and not have to be
not having downtown and same thing goes for my air dryer I want to just use my air dryer system
I would do the same thing just bypass this guy or if I wanted to bypass the air dryer close it close
it and then uh open it up so that I just used the air filter system and that's just in case my air
dryer takes a dump on me for some odd reason but yeah I just kind of wanted to show you um how that
system worked and uh hopefully it all makes sense and you can see why I plumbed the copper pipe the
way I did it and I'm using half inch pipe for all my Plumbing here just because I'm only running a
short distance in this shop this shop's only roughly 500 square foot so if I was running a
larger shop you know I'll go with three quarter but I think half inch is more than enough for my
uses here on this table so but yeah it's mainly the feed that guy which is the sneasy plaza table
now with everything complete let's take a look at the end result while I share my closing thoughts
the whole project took about three days on and off to complete spent about 900 for the refrigerant
Air Dryer but these normally are about 1600 but if you shop it around you can find a pretty good
deal for under a thousand five stage filter I bought on Amazon and at that time was under 400.
the fittings along with the copper pipe and tools were right around 300 so all in all this complete
system which is everything after my air compressor was right around 1600. the great thing about this
air system compared to others is that it's very low maintenance and pretty much on autopilot
the only thing I really need to do from time to time is refresh the desiccan beads
at first glance I know this system can be a little bit Overkill right now for the shop
however I do plan on adding additional air system tools in the near future
also this system is not only intended for plasma but if you paint cars or have air hungry tools
that need good air quality this would be I think a good fit
but most importantly I get clean dry Quality Air delivered to my
pneumatic tools which in turn makes them last longer and operate better
so far it seems to be doing a great job for what I'm using for but the test of time will really
show how this air system performance holds up if you're looking to build one like this
I've created a detail diagram that breaks down the air system layout piece by piece
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