We just unwrapped our “Clippard air recievers”, and are unsure as to how they work. No one on our team is particularly skilled in pneumatics, and we’re having a pretty tough time, aside from all of the rookie team stuff.
Can anyone offer an explanation?
The Clippard tanks are simply for storing extra compressed air, so you can use your pistons quickly without waiting for the compressor to fill them.
Have you looked at the Pneumatics Manual?
It has a sample pneumatics setup to guide you.
We’ve somewhat skimmed through it, but as I said, we really don’t know too much about what we’re doing. And I don’t see pneumatics as a “guess and check” sort of thing, so we’re sort of afraid to just go messing with things.
But something that I didn’t see explained in the pneumatics manual (as I just skimmed through it again), is how to attach the cylinders to…well, anything. They have green covers over the ends, which I’m somewhat afraid to remove. (Sorry, we’re a rookie team running purely off of our KoP, and we really can’t afford to break anything.)
What do we need to attach the cylinders?
You need to thread in the NPT (nominal pipe thread) to tube adapters to the thread beneath the green caps. These parts came in the SMC bag that you recieved this week.
In case you you are not aware NPT is a tapered thread so you **DO NOT **need to bottom out the fittings as I have seen many try to do. You need tighten them until they are snug with an approiately sized wrench (not a 12" adjustable) and leak check at low pressure.
To attactch them to your robot just use hose clamps or zipties.
The recievers are used to store air at 120 psi before it is regulated down for the rest of the system.
Pete
are the green covers rather small, and made of plastic, and centered in the both ends of the recievers? if so, then they are just shipping plugs, their purpose is to keep dirt out of the recievers until you are ready to install the threaded fittings into them. Take them out…see how empty the recievers are inside…