air assist

Anything to do with air assist, vacuum tables, fume extraction and related...

air assist

Postby lasersafe1 » Sun Nov 29, 2009 2:28 pm

I am going to build the air nozzel according to your plans. Thanks! I was going to use my air compressor but then I realized it would introduce oil. Oil and optics don't mix. I see you ordered a 70l/min aquarium pump from Ebay. At the time you didn't know if this would be too little or too much. Any feelings now that you have it running?
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Re: air assist

Postby bdring » Wed Dec 02, 2009 2:17 am

Pump: I am happy with with it. It blows more than enough air. It is a diaphragm pump so it is a little loud and does vibrate a little. I don't have it mounted inside the enclosure so the vibration is not an issue. I have a ball valve on the back of my enclosure where I can set the amount of air. Sometimes when cutting paper it is overkill, blowing things around and feeding the "fire" and I turn it way down. I never really run it full open. At most, it is about 3/4. I put the pump outside so I could possibly have a dual source system so I could put a nitrogen tank on. I think that is the preferred gas for some materials.

Nozzle: Mine works fine, I have nothing to compare it too, so I don't know if it could be improved. I had a friend make it, so I tried to keep it simple. As I understand it, you want the air to keep smoke off the lens, and clean it out of the beam path. I though if you totally engineered the perfect nozzle, it would be fun to have it made at Shapeways (http://www.shapeways.com/). They are doing some amazing things with sintered stainless steel. You could make it out of SLA plastic too.
Bart
"If you didn't build it, you will never own it."
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Re: air assist

Postby lasersafe1 » Wed Dec 16, 2009 2:52 am

Act now and act fast if you want this deal. Looks nice for an air pump.
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Re: air assist

Postby bdring » Wed Dec 16, 2009 3:36 am

Those can be very, very noisy. I almost bought their air brush pump. Quiet, but not the best price.

Nice hose though :D
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Re: air assist

Postby iGull » Thu Jul 21, 2011 11:06 am

Hi

I just purchased a Hailea ACO-308 which is the 45 litres/min 30W diaphragm/piston pond aerator pump. It was considerably cheaper than the 70 litres/min version (at least here in the UK).
I was a wee bit concerned that it might not be powerful enough after reading some of the other posts on the 70 litre pump, but shouldn't have been - with the standard open-ended hose supplied (5mm ID), it will easily blow out a match at 300mm (about 12" in US dollars :-) ) and with the bore reduced by 50%, will do the same at 150mm. I can't think of a more qualitative test with the 'instruments' at hand - apart from saying that it will blow it's own box off the end of table easily and will be good for blowing up airbeds if all else fails LOL.

Noise-wise, reasonably quiet if there is a bit of load on it (pipe restriction) - left free without the brass nozzle fitting, the diaphragm rattles a bit. I haven't checked if there is any flow adjust, but I don't see anything in the instructions.

Bart's comment (I think it was Bart?) about the air pulsing and perhaps adding a tank - I think that a decent length of thinnish wall surgical tubing from the pump up to the tygon tube going to the nozzle should even out the flow sufficiently - perhaps just use surgical or model I/C engine silicone fuel tube all the way ?

Only other comment would be to make sure that the pump feet are restrained as it will 'walk about' if left to itself :-) My pump will be in the base of the cutter as I'm building a floor mounted version.

Cheers

Neil
EMOs are a sign of weakness ...
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