Thread: size of air lines

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I'm shopping for push locks and tubing for my air cylinders. What size lines are you running to your props? Is bigger better?

Thanks!

If your using large bore & long throw cylinders then bigger is necessary. Any thing that hogs a lot of air needs a larger supply line.........

I use 3/8 air lines until I hit the prop then go down to 1/4 poly line.

Usually your lower bore cylinders have 1/8 then the larger have 1/4 ports. In some cases you can have 5/32 or 3/8 ports as well. Not all solenoids are the same even though the ports are the matching size to the cylinder. You want a large opening determined by the Cv factor. This explains how much air goes through when opened.

One solenoid may have a .16 CV while the same size port on another measures .86. This is 5 times more air released.

Ex.

I had a 1 1/2 inch bore cylinder (1/4 ports) on a 4 way MAC solenoid(1/4 ports). It moved very slow. The only way I was able to use it quickly was to put quick exhausts on each port. I tried a different solenoid(1/4 ports) on the same cylinder and it moved exactly the way I wanted.

You see the Cv was higher which removed the "bottleneck" from the MAC valve.

Hope this helps

Awesome! I believe these are 1.5" bore cylinders too, so I'll look for larger solenoids and 1/4 poly. I assume the different solenoid that you tried with the same size 1/4 ports was a bigger Cv?

Thanks!

First year using air, pretty excited!!

Like Industen, I use 3/8" supply lines to the prop, then 1/4" poly lines from manifolds to solenoids and then to cylinders. I also use a supplemental air supply T'd into the line just before the air enters the prop (at the pressure regulator). This way the prop does not have to struggle for air on activation through a long supply line run.

i use 3/8 brass barb fittings in either 1/8 or 1/4 npt. i buy air hose in 50" lenths and cut to lenth.