Pneumatics emergency stop switch for prototypes

[2508electronics]

One of the people on our team comes up with some pretty good prototypes and one of the more recent ones was a set of jaws for picking up the totes, quickly made out of conduit, a 1x4 and a cylinder. When we tried it the 1x4 snapped apart and went two different ways. After that, I built a switch that can be added before or after the main regulator that uses a solenoid to release any pressure in the entire system and diverts air coming in from the compressor at the press of a button. When we tried a modification to the prototype, it started bending the conduit and the button was pressed and worked like a charm. For prototyping in our shop, we use the shop air compressor set to 70 PSI (rather than the required 60 to accommodate for pressure loss from the hose) with a primary regulator at the prototype to get it to 60. It is about 1 CFM produced. The switch has two of the Automation Direct lever switches to stop, a hard to reach microswitch from last year's KoP and a Festo solenoid. The external off switch allows any normally open DIO sensor such as Bimba magnetic reed switches or other push buttons to be added to automatically shut it off. For 24 volts, I use an old PDB cRIO output, however, if you use 12 volt solenoids, any 12 volt source works with it too. This would never be used on the robot at a competition but works well for safety during prototyping in the shop. I thought I would share this if anyone was interested in building it. It would also work great for if you are trying to figure out issues with the compressor not shutting off. I attached the wiring diagram and will get pictures on here on Monday.https://www.dropbox.com/s/y74gdm6ahc...agram.png?dl=0