Yep, I broke two of the Derale cooler at the point where the tubing exits the cooler prior to the fitting. After the first failure I had some flexible lines made to absorb the vibration. I think it lasted a bit longer but still failed.
You could likely have this set for a lot longer. You could have 3 gallons of water in your tank and besides displacing how much air that tank can hold it’s not like it can re-evaporate and be soaked up by the air which is already at 100% humidity.
If we could be inside the tank during operation what we would see is that we are in the cloud. The interior of that tank is at 100% humidity and water is beading up and running down the inside of the tank.
So whether your drain comes on at 15 minutes and 4 oz out of water or you have it come on in an hour and a half and it lets out a liter and a half of water will make no real difference besides that you’ve activated your drain five times as often.
The tank still going to be 100% RH during
operation.
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yeah but have you tried adjusting those tiny little knobs with sausage fingers?
it came set at 15.
lol
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I hear what you’re saying. 
Lol.
Most of the drains are usually have a slot you could fit a small screwdriver into turn some of the cheaper ones don’t.
I’m pretty used to dealing with micro dip switches and tiny adjustment knobs at work. It can be tedious especially when they’re buried in a circuit board buried in a piece of equipment with almost no access and even less documentation.
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mine is the one from aircompressors direct. skipped amazonchina on that one. which is undoubtedly still made in china.
I just did this mod on my compressor, like OP it’s a 5HP 60 gallon unit. Air temps went from 275 at the tank input to 95. I also used the Derale cooler and an automatic water separator. Unfortunately the hose I used is only rated for 200 degrees so the compressor is down until the high temp hose arrives…Very cool mod, the plasma table should be happy.
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Has anyone tried an orifice approach to cooling the air?
Run your compressor output through several .250 or smaller ports [.125?] to keep volume of air.
The hot compressed air will cool rapidly going through the small ports - as seen with air conditioners, and any pneumatic tool - ergo tools and air lines freezing up in 40* temps.
What kind of air conditioners use this technique? Can you provided model number of an example unit?
I ve seen vortex coolers before but can you link an example of what you are describing in action?
@TinWhisperer - I will keep trying to find exactly what I am looking for. Problem is that it was an open discussion when I was young working in Grocery Retail. This was during the phasing out of R12 for environmental reasons and the talk of using “other than R12, or R134 families” to run the refrigerant units for the perishable departments. Typical refrigerant alternates between gas and liquid state. Current technology could not effectively use air, 02 (not so safe) or CO2 due to it was not cost effective to get the gas in question to get cold enough.
I don’t have the picture anymore, but working on a piece of equipment one day at 35F ish degrees, my impact gun had a layer of frost on it around the motor and the IR temp gun had it at -5F. I run 1/2" air on my service truck. The other guy was on a 1/4 air line and it was froze solid starting about 3’ from the end. Bad enough I had to keep swapping out impacts with one on the floorboard of my truck with the heater on.
I know that this is going to have to do with being a certain minimum CFM - which is why pneumatic tools with air motors and blow guns…non OSHA approved…will freeze up, and or start blowing chunks of ice as the moisture in the air lines condenses and freezes into nasty little projectiles. Not so much blowing ice with the impact, but my angle and die grinders do it.
This is about 9 beers in, as far as I’ve been able to get working incrementally. Thoughts? Criticisms are ok, just don’t be a donkey.
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WOW! You have really got a lot of organization. And you did that with only 9 beers? Pretty impressive.
Obviously, I would be happy with such a set up and it is 1000 times better than what I started with and I had reasonable results.
A couple of questions/observations:
- The fan is probably going to do a good job but if it doesn’t cool the air enough you could increase the gap between the wall and the coils to gain more air flow. If the air does not get cooled enough, the moisture will not drop out of the air.
- I see that you did not fit any desiccant beads in this set-up. Many of us do not really see much moisture collection even with multiple water traps/down legs so we add the desiccant beads for more insurance. If you decide to add the beads, remember to have some filter between it and the cutter.
- You will want to check your M60 filter regularly in the beginning as it WILL trap the moisture effectively but will become saturated quickly if there is too much moisture in your air. Once it is wet, it is no longer trapping moisture and is a liability like a wet sponge. If it remains dry then you are solid and on easy street.
All in all: Very good for a small space and exquisitely neat!
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Thank you Jim. I agree on the spacing. I figured I would try as is first experiment then see if I change that variable what the effect is. Easy enough to add spacers.
Also agree on dissecant. I use loads of it on my 3DP. If i get wet air i can add another can. What do you recommend for dissecant ½” fittings?
one thing that was disappointing is the supposed ½” maxair kit IS NOT. fittings quickly go down to ⅜”. annoying but i’m not going to replace it at this point.
I have to force myself to go slow… methodical because i’m mistake prone.
i left room in the design for a refrigerator. And you can’t see it but I installed a 20” fan above the AComp.
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Here is what I installed:
Tru-Flate 56-081 Dessicant Dryer Amazon.com
This has 1/2 npt female threads. I shared a bracket on FireShare as this item does not come with a bracket. Tru-Flate 56-081 Desicant Dryer Bracket | FireShare | Langmuir Systems
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ordered. Now I’ll have to move the main air service line, but I have a plan, no biggie. Where should I send my address so you can send me a bracket? 
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Oh…I get it. You won’t have the table yet. 
You are a funny guy!!! If you don’t want to wait…gosh. Are you serious?
@ChelanJim a jest buddy. 
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When I replied a while back that all my aftercooler did was keep water out of the tank, you asked if that was the point. Looking at your setup you don’t have the cooler in between the tank and pump, unless I’m missing something.
What is your auto drain for? The tank itself? Does the separator after the cooler drain itself after pressure is gone? I’m super curious to see if that collects any water.
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Steady hands at 9 beer.
How are you draining the aftercooler?
Like @ChelanJim & @brownfox questioned I also don t see how you get air to move across the aftercooling with it flat against the wall.
Does the gray hose plumbed in to the top right aftercooling fitting run directly to the right side of the tank outlet ?
Here you are describing the condensing coil which is normally the outdoor or backroom part on a air conditioner
After the compressor, the discharge line carries High Temperature high Pressure gas to the condensing coil to reject heat and cause state change in the refrigerant. a Low Temperature high pressure Liquid.
Here you are describing the metering device which is the divide between the High pressure side and low pressure side of the system and feeds the evaporator . This drop in pressure starts a state change in the refrigerant. now to change state the refrigerant required a huge amount of energy and to get this energy from absorbing heat from the surrounding area (this includes the pipework).
This is what is happening here. The tool and the end of the hose becomes an evaporator absording heat.
The air is actually Absorbing heat to cause this issue. The air will move slower near inside walls of the pipe, this slower move air may start to have its water vapour condense even freeze against the insides of the pipe (really there should not be this much water vapour in the compressed air by the time it reaches the tool…). meanwhile the air flow (laminar ) in the middle of the pipe is still absorbing heat .
This effect is exploited by vortex and membrane air coolers at the expense of a huge pressure drop and/or the blowing off some of compressed air to atmosphere.
@Sticks This is a topic from awhile that discusses some of these coolers
IMO the kind of heat exchanges we want for rejecting heat from compressed air are condensing coils, that reject heat and maintain pressure.
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I have not done any research into the theory for this application. I am just applying life experience to a possible application to gain the benefit.
Based on what I have done with AC work, the high pressure side post compressor runs around 150psi+ and the low side can be 40-80. If we could get it to sit around 80-90psi on the low side post orifice and pre regulator, then the plasma cutter should be able to function providing there is enough CFM with the arrangement.
It would make for an interesting experiment to see if dumping the compressor output line into a manifold with multiple .060 ports with individual lines, the into another manifold to a single line, then running that output into the tank to see what the temp drop is.