3. Can water damage my compressed air system?
Water, if left in a system, can damage the air compressor and components connected to your compressed air system and possibly contaminate your product. Piping will rust, this rust will mix with the compressor oil and the dirt particles that are introduced into the system through the inlet of the compressor. This mixture forms a sticky mess that can clog pneumatic circuitry and stain or pit finely finished surfaces.
http://www.pneumatictips.com/can-water-damage-compressed-air-system
Ric Jarrett says
I noticed your insight and comments in a recent article about the need for more pneumatic vocational training. You might wish to follow up with SMC Pneumatics in Noblesville, IN as they have a very interesting program that houses new graduates and fully develops them as pneumatic specialists that then go one to work full time within the industry. Keep up the great writing!
(Tom) Thomas U. Coe says
We need more of this thinking and effort and one area I believe we should take a serious look at, is with our U.S. cultural perception of and the associated limited prestige afforded our apprenticeship programs and the U.S. journeyman. Unfortunately, the “journeyman” in our country has reached the pinnacle of his craft skill or profession, more than likely to spend the rest of his entire carrier at the firm in which he served his apprenticeship. We need to correct this! I would like to suggest we take a close look at those “Apprenticeships”, “Journeyman-ships” and the “Master Craftsman Certifications” as offered in Europe and Asia, that establishes far more prestige and opportunity to the vocational tradesman. This would stimulate a great deal more interest in the vocational trades as a viable and rewarding carrier opportunity.
I served a 5 yr. (10,000 hr.) apprenticeship as a Tool and Die Maker and was blessed in being able to serve in 4 different “job shops” during the course of my apprenticeship. This provided me with a wealth of diversified training and experience in my craft. I experienced a steep learning curve in the first 12 months at each of these shops, with each having different services, products, customers, equipment, approaches skills, etc., along with the journeymen to work under. These steep learning curves typically tend to flatten precipitously in about 14 to 18 months. This diversification of training and experience played a significant role in allowing me to be competitive and to win the 1965 Los Angeles tool & die apprenticeship contest and to go on to win in the California State competition. As a result, I have enjoyed a very successful and rewarding carrier being exposed and participating in manufacturing throughout the world.
In my opinion, based on personal experience, our apprentices should be encouraged, if not mandated, to change employers every 12 to 18 months so as to gain this diversified training and experience. Becoming a journeyman at the conclusion of your apprenticeship should NOT be the end of one’s formal training. The next 4 to 5 years as a journeyman should continue to be a formal structured educational phase in one’s professional carrier as the word “journeyman” implies and is recognized in other parts of the world. After completing his 4 to 5 yr. structured journeymanship; not spending more than 18 months of it in any one company, the journeyman would be eligible to apply for his “Master Craftsman Credentials”. This would involve the submission of a project that he had personally designed and built demonstrating his craft skills (much like a master’s or doctoral thesis) along with taking the required written and oral exams. In successfully passing your exams and having your project accepted, you will be awarded your “Master Craftsman Credentials”. In many countries, you are not allowed to have apprentices working for you unless you have the Master Craftsman Credentials in that trade and in some countries you are not allowed to even have a business in a trade without Master Credentials.
We need to expand our vocational training in these manners through to Master Craftsman status. In doing so, we would be instilling significant prestige into these craft trades and attracting many more candidates to successfully pursue vocational carriers resolving the many critical skill needs we have in our country today. The Master Craftsman, via business ownership, has the opportunity to become a multimillionaire in his or her own right and a significant contributor to our society and our economic development as a nation. This being far beyond what our current journeyman has the opportunity or expectation to achieve. It should also be pointed out that this can be accomplished without amassing a humongous “student loan debt” as is typical in pursuing other professional carriers.
I certainly recognize and appreciate that many current employers of apprentices would be very apprehensive and against such an approach. They typically are very jealous of their apprentices, expecting them to spend the rest of their carriers at their business. After all, the employers have supposedly expended all of this time, effort and expense in training them; the apprentices need to show their appreciation and loyalty by staying with the firm that taught and trained them…right? However, as this were to play out, as evidenced in other countries, the rotation of apprentices and journeymen with diversified training and experience through their business will prove to be the far greater contributors and expanders to their firm than would the long term apprentice and journeyman who are only grounded in their own undiversified, myopic and limited experience, having only been exposed to the one business’s own practices and shortcomings.
William K. says
Yes, when waste heat can be recovered for something useful that does reduce overall costs. Anotherm interesting option is to insulate the tank enough so that the haot air does not lose heat, and then utilize the hot air for the process. But that is quite a challenge and usually can’t be done.
William K. says
Reciprocating compressors can be serviced in a manner similar to smaller engines, so more folks feel comfortable working on them. screw type compressors appear to have much closer tolerance requirements and are rather intimidating for the unfamiliar. AND they make their own kind of noise.
William K. says
Pneumatic actuators have a large advantage in that they can be stalled and not burn ou, burn out, ot overheat. Somtimes that is very important.
William K. says
At one installation the compressor did run constantly and the room got very hot. Investigation showed that a service tech had seriously misadjusted the air powered desication system. All of the settings were terribly wrong. A complete re-adjusting by a different tech solved the problem.