Compressed Air Dryers
 

I am thinking about buying (or building) a compressed air dryer.

Any suggestions?

I note that Harbor Freight has one available..

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=40211

Has anyone had any experience with this unit?

Thanks in advance for any advice you could offer.

TMT

On 8 Sep 2004 11:53:26 -0700, (Too_Many_Tools) wrote:

||I am thinking about buying (or building) a compressed air dryer.
||
||Any suggestions?

An old refrigerator with a heat exchanger inside (coils of copper tubing) , air
enters and exits through the side walls of the fridge.
Texas Parts Guy

||I am thinking about buying (or building) a compressed air dryer.
||
||Any suggestions?

An old refrigerator with a heat exchanger inside (coils of copper tubing) ,
air
enters and exits through the side walls of the fridge.


You would also need something to get the condensed water out of the system.
Usually, a ping tank with a drain valve will work. The water will collect at
the bottom of the tank and it will be spit out when the drain valve is pulled.

Another option would be an air dryer used in a pnuematic truck brake system.
The only one I know by name is the Bendix AD-4. The problem is that it might
not have the capacity for the amount of air you would need.

A few months ago I looked at the HF unit too. I posted asking for
experiences. No replies. I didn't want to commit a few hundred bucks
plus a bunch of hookup time to find out I'd bought garbage, so without
a believable provenance I passed. Please post your experiences if any.

In the meantime, I've heard many times of guys taking a length of
copper refrigeration tubing and bending it into a coil which then gets
submerged in cold water. After emerging it goes into a dryer, then into
a coalescing filter. I scrounged a piece of 1/2" copper tubing 100' long
back in the '80s but have never had the nerve to try to bend a neat
spiral. It's awful easy to kink tubing during bending. Lots of guys tell
you to do this but no one to my knowledge has yet actually described how,
ideally with pictures.

Grant

Too_Many_Tools wrote:

I am thinking about buying (or building) a compressed air dryer.

Any suggestions?

I note that Harbor Freight has one available..

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=40211

Has anyone had any experience with this unit?

Thanks in advance for any advice you could offer.

TMT

In article ,
(Rileyesi) wrote:

||I am thinking about buying (or building) a compressed air dryer.
||
||Any suggestions?

An old refrigerator with a heat exchanger inside (coils of copper tubing) ,
air
enters and exits through the side walls of the fridge.


You would also need something to get the condensed water out of the system.
Usually, a ping tank with a drain valve will work. The water will collect at
the bottom of the tank and it will be spit out when the drain valve is pulled.

Another option would be an air dryer used in a pnuematic truck brake system.
The only one I know by name is the Bendix AD-4. The problem is that it might
not have the capacity for the amount of air you would need.

Bendix has a neat little "Everflow" module you can use to gang two
dryers together and have endless capacity. Other makers have their own
variants, but I can't remember any of the market names for 'em.
You can probably find the highest volume air dryers on scrapped buses
and garbage trucks--including the two-headed variety of dryer. But
you'll almost always need to replace the desiccant on anything you dig
out of the scrap yard.

--
B.B. --I am not a goat! thegoat4 at airmail.net

I've made one of these air dryers described below. More of a ladder than a
coil with a drain valve a the bottom. It sits in a bucket of ice water. It
pulls out a cup or so of water after a short time of use. If anyone wants
to see a picture, let me know.

--
Gary Brady
Austin, TX
www.powdercoatoven.4t.com


"Grant Erwin" wrote in message
...
(snip In the meantime, I've heard many times of guys taking a length of
copper refrigeration tubing and bending it into a coil which then gets
submerged in cold water. After emerging it goes into a dryer, then into
a coalescing filter. I scrounged a piece of 1/2" copper tubing 100' long
back in the '80s but have never had the nerve to try to bend a neat
spiral. It's awful easy to kink tubing during bending. Lots of guys tell
you to do this but no one to my knowledge has yet actually described how,
ideally with pictures.

Grant

Too_Many_Tools wrote:

I am thinking about buying (or building) a compressed air dryer.

Any suggestions?

I note that Harbor Freight has one available..

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=40211

Has anyone had any experience with this unit?

Thanks in advance for any advice you could offer.

TMT

Grant Erwin wrote:
I scrounged a piece of 1/2" copper tubing 100' long
back in the '80s but have never had the nerve to try to bend a neat
spiral. It's awful easy to kink tubing during bending. Lots of guys tell
you to do this but no one to my knowledge has yet actually described how,
ideally with pictures.

I have not formed 1/2" copper into coils but have done lots of 1/4" and
3/8" stainless (316L) tubing coils. The way I did them is easiest with
two people. Find a parking lot with a 10" or 12" diameter steel pipe
sticking up out of the asphalt like a parking barrier. It will probably
need to be 4 or 5 feet tall. Get your partner in crime to hold one end
of the tubing against the pipe at the bottom with the stub length you
want outside of the coil sticking out. You walk around the pipe while
pulling the tubing tightly against the pipe. As long as you keep the
tube tight against the pipe while you walk, it will not kink. If you let
the tension off the tube, it will kink instead of forming neatly around
the pipe. Refrigeration copper is pretty soft, so I think the same trick
would work.

Sorry, no pictures, I did all these in or around a semiconductor fab
that prohibited cameras.

Bob