Rebuilt my air system

[housedad]

Well, I finally got around to redoing my air system in the garage. All 1/2" copper to a coalescer, dual filters, regulator and up to a reel and a drop for my milling machine. The milling machine uses a air assist on the knee to make it easier to lift the 11" x 58" table. It is a beast of a turret mill.

Pictures in order left to right: (click to enlarge)

1, the compressor.

2. I ran a hose bent back to the wall to provide vibration relief and proper drip angles. I used 1/2" goodyear rubber for this. where the pipe starts at the wall is 3 inches higher than where it ends 25 ft away at the regulator filters to provie a downward slope for drraining.

3. Overview of the filter setup. The wire is the power cord for the compressor. I have to plug it in due to having only one 220 v outlet out there. Gotta share. The vertical section also acts as a drip leg with a automatic drain at the bottom and a ball valve to service it.

4. From left to right: ball valve shutoff. -- Coalescing filter -- 5 micron particulate filter -- .5 micron oil filter -- regulator -- utility connector hi flow -- riser leg out -- ball valve for bleeding air out of secondary system -- very short drop with a 45 on it to disperse the bleed off air. (Wilkerson F18-04-SK00 and M18-04-BK00 filters)

5. Left hand view

6. Right hand view

7, Feed riser pipe

 

[housedad]

more pictures

8. Feeder line running to the reel

9. showing the take off of the feeder line to go to the mill

10. Drop for the mill

11. Side view of reel

12. Front view of reel. Since the roof is trusses, I did not want to screw anything into them, especially to hold something heavy. I took peices of 2x10's, drilled four holes through them, and sandwiched them to the beams using four 3/8" bolts all the way through. Solid as all heck. On top of that, the reels can be moved if I wanted to later without having to drill any holes.


I'm really happy with this. My plasma cutter has no problem at all now. Air is dry as a bone. I ran a inline desiccant filter through 4 tanks of air and it showed absolutely no color change. All fittings on the system are now hiflow. I also changed all my hoses and tooling connectors to hiflow.

 

[bimmer1980]

Looks good! I can appreciate the thought and effort you put into this!

 

[LXAwolf]

Nice clean setup, very nice!

 

[housedad]

Thanks. I had the parts sitting around for a couple of years to plumb this in better and finally got around to it.

It is sooo nice now to just pull down the hose from the reel, throw on the valve, and use the air. Then just reel it up. No more hoses on the floor to trip over!!