Air prep, save me some money possibly....

[davek0974]

HI all.

I have been running my little self-built 650x650mm cnc table in the shop where my day job is, here we have a large air plant with refrigerated dryer etc and it's about 100' at least to where I have been drawing the air off for my Hypertherm 30XP plasma.

In preparation to take my table home, I bought a twin stage 3Hp compressor and have been testing out on the table but the cut quality does not seem as good, my guess is moisture in the air. the compressor is about 10' away from the table and the two are connected with 10mm PVC air line.

It has a Filter-regulator on the outlet and this see a fair bit of water when the table is running for an length of time. I know the 30XP has a built in FRU but have not seen any water drain out from that yet.

Now, my question is, what do i do to tackle this in a cost-effective and easy to achieve way??

The guy that services our compressors mentioned a desiccant hose but i see they are rated for intermittent use and I don't have much faith in one of them to fix this.

Then there is the proper refrigerated dryers, the cheapest i can find is about ?540 delivered so no very cheap BUT I could just about do this if needed.

There are also the wall mounted desiccant dryers but not very cheap.

I see things that are home-built and go into the line from the compressor to main tank, but this means hacking a new compressor and finding the parts to build something that may or may not work.

My shop is small so getting any real distance between supply and CNC is going to be hard, I have read that 20' of black iron pipe will do, but no proof or details as to where this pipe goes or how effective it is?? I could run some pipes up in the roof space possibly but would need assembling in position.

What I dont want to be doing is blowing consumables and wasting metal stock as both cost ??? and that is precious to me I have no objection to spending when needed but it must be spent on stuff that works.

Any suggestions will be much appreciated.
Thanks

BTW I'm in the UK and it's getting very damp now, the shop is only minimally heated to stop rust.

[acourtjester]

There are a few different ways to remove water for the air.
Check out this from google https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=franzinator+build
Also there are a few posts here the help and you can do.
http://www.plasmaspider.com/viewtopic.p ... 687#p58687

http://www.plasmaspider.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14089
If you go the pipe route you need 30 feet you can fold it back and forth mounted on a wall with input on bottom and drain on bottom and output at the top.

[davek0974]

Thanks for that, I have been reading about the Franzinator but there seem to as many people that say it is snake-oil as there are those that love it. I could not weld anything as I could not guarantee my welds being safe at pressure so would have to build the threaded non-weld Franzinator, only issues with that are that big pipe fittings are damn expensive over here and also it goes between the pump and tank which means hacking a brand new compressor.

30' of iron pipe and fittings would probably cost almost as much as the refrigerated units! My ceiling height is only 6'-6" so would need a fair few elbows, nipples and tees.

I guess what I really want is an off-the-shelf product that is proven to work and is the lowest cost option, whatever that cost may be.

I see fairly big multiple filter units with a large desiccant chamber included, nearly all US though and over here are just about the same price as the refrigerated units again - crazy. At least they use no electricity, but are they any good?

Very hard finding good stuff over here.

[davek0974]

It seems it either a refrigerated unit for ?500 that gets me a dew point of -3c or a desiccant/filter combination unit at around ?390 that gets me a dew point of -30c but will need filters or drying (if I can find a dry-able unit)

So, what does dew point do for me and which unit would you guys opt for??

[davek0974]

I had a chat with the guy that services our plant at work and in the end have ordered a small refrigerated dryer, it's big enough to handle more than twice what I currently need so should be good for future expansion too.

[jimcolt]

Definitely the best choice. Refrigerated dryers cost a little more up front, but over time require less maintenance and upkeep. All air tools will benefit from dry air...not just your plasma!

Jim Colt Hypertherm

[davek0974]

Thanks Jim, that's the way I looked at it, we've had one running at work for about 8 years and apart from a clean has been faultless, the machines never see a drip in the filters. This is on a 50hp screw compressor so slightly bigger setup