Compressed air distribution in the workshop (by alaric)
Up until now, I've just plugged flexible hoses into my compressor to run tools.
I've got a bunch of things that need clean air (spray guns, tyre inflator, the plasma cutter, and a blow gun), and a bunch of things that need lubricated air (nailer, drill, impact screwdriver, sander, angle grinder, chisel, and impact wrench), so I've standardised on using PCL connectors for clean air and the ones that come with cheap air tools from Aldi and Lidl (what is that interface called?) for lubricated air:
To convert from one to t'other, I have my handy compressed air tool caddy. On the front is a regulator, filter, and oil injector, with a PCL plug on the inlet, and on the outlet a springy hose with a shutoff valve and a socket for oiled air:
At the rear is a storage box with my bottle of airline oil, the key for my air drill, the spanners for my air grinder, and a box with a pipette and funnel for putting oil into tools:
Now, this setup is OK, but it's a bit fiddly to go the compressor and plug things in; and I've been making something that needs compressed air as part of the building infrastructure (there will be a blog post focussing on it later so I won't go into detail now, but it's a pneumatic vacuum ejector):
So, it was time to run proper pneumatic plumbing around the place! I had a bunch of copper plumbing pipe left behind by plumbers as we've had a lot of building work lately, so I had some 28mm, 22mm, and normal 15mm tube lying around. I decided to use all the 28mm tube for the long run across the ceiling, all the 22mm tube I had to extend that to make the distance I needed, then 15mm tube for the rest, because larger tube means easier air flow - and because all that volume inside the pipes gives me an extra litre or so of air storage...
To combine them, I had to buy reducers of the appropriate diameters; I went for solder-ring fittings because I'm well equipped with blowtorches. Plastic pipe clips hold it securely to the ceiling beams:
And the 15mm plumbing terminates in things like this:
To convert between the world of plumbing (15mm copper) and the world of compressed air lines (1/4" BSP threads), I searched on eBay and found adapters with 15mm compression fittings on one side and 1/4" BSP on the other end:
The PCL fittings, ball valves, and other hardware came from Airlines Pneumatics.
Now, at various points, I needed to interface to flexible hoses - to connect to the compressor or the plasma cutter, for instance. To do that, I needed to get adapters between barbed hose fittings and 1/4" BSP threads or PCL fittings, as appropriate (all from Airlines Pneumatics). Fitting these correctly needs to be done with care, or they'll leak, so I've made a video explaining the process:
(you can also watch it on YouTube)
Although the fittings are depressingly expensive, it's been very rewarding setting this up - I love working on infrastructure, and now it's a lot easier to use my compressed air equipment 🙂
Building Maintenance, Metalworking | alaric | 
Mon 18th Jun 2018 4:38 pm
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By Lionel Snell, Wed 20th Jun 2018 @ 8:38 am
The video had the play triangle crossed out. Nice pipes!
By sarah, Wed 20th Jun 2018 @ 2:50 pm
It's supposed to redirect to youtube if your computer can't handle the video player Al's written but something seems broken somewhere!
By alaric, Wed 20th Jun 2018 @ 11:15 pm
I've tried switching to MPEG4 video, and added the YouTube link in case that doesn't work!