Low pressure pneumatics

Im putting together a low pressure system and was looking through what Ive got in the garage after buying Hydra. I noticed Ive got a few 16bar regulators, which is good.

I was reading through the rules and trying to work out if i can use these in a ten bar system.

It would appear that on the low pressure side I would need an 11 bar pressure relief valve and there is nothing to stop me setting up the regulator to deliver 10bar with a gauge.

Hopefully this makes sense and people can tell me if Im right or if I have to buy a specific regulator.

Andy

Ideally your regulator wants to be for C02 so that they can cope with the 52 bar input pressure, they probably are if they came with Hydra. If they are 16bar regs then this is the max pressure they will do, they should regulate down to 10 bar.

Technobots do a 10-16 bar adjustable LP relief valve (but there is no problem using a 11bar one on 10 bar, it is going to blow if your reg fails which is what it is there for).

I have a few different types of regulator, some which came with Hydra, some which didnt.

I have a nice looking nitrogen regulator with a nice set of gauges for the high pressure and low pressure sides with an in built prv. I get the feeling that one will be going back to where it came from (waiting for passing lorry to throw it back on to!)

May just recover the gauges and prv as these can come in useful.

Andy

I believe a nitrogen regulator will work. Turbulence mk1s first regulator was the cheap one from technobots (i say cheap, there about £50) they quote they only do upto 10bar.. I took of the handle, screwed it further in so it went to 16 bar and ran like that, just replaced the 11bar relief valve with an ajustable one that i set to around 17bar. Worked fine for about 2 years.

Just spend some time tweaking it before you put it in the robot- put a hose with a dump valve and a pressure guage on the outlet, and wind it in till you get the right pressure then lock it off. De-pressurize and re-pressurize the hose a few times to make sure the pressure stays constant, and watch out for the pressure slowly creeping up.

Make sure that the built in PRV is ok for 1000psi not 3000 as nitrogen and that it is a prv not a burst disk.

Also I spoke to mike (pressure) today for you, he doesnt have any HP Prvs left. But he can order in batches of 10 so again if there is enough interest he may do so.

In my experience, regulator PRVs tend to be on the LP side, not the HP side and is there to protect the regulator and not any pipework or components fed from it. This is a way that regulator suppliers are getting around CE marking the PRV.