How do I hook up and use the 2009 Pneumatic Festo valves. I dont know how to do the electronics, and I’m not quite sure how they work as far as the input and the output either. Any help you can give me will be grately apreciated.
Check out this site. Thanks to Team 358.
FIRST Valve Kit Assembly/Operating Instructions
hook up and use the 2009 Pneumatic Festo valves
try this pdf file
http://www.festo.com/INetDomino/files_01/FestoFIRSTValveAssy.pdf
Electrical Connection
Slide gray connector from black housing (can be pushed out from top with supplied
screw), and wire per the following:
1 – Negative
2 – Positive
3 – Not required
Note: If the polarity is switched, the valve will still switch, but the LED will not work.
team 1946
mohamed
Is the light supposed to turn on when I power it up, because sadly it doesn’t.
There were a lot of “issues” with the Festo valves last year. If you haven’t already, I recommend reading some of the CD posts from 2008 on the topic. It may affect your decision to use them.
To the best of my knowledge, there never was a response from – or corrective action taken by – Festo or FIRST after the 2008 season. I really hope that whatever the root cause was it has been addressed in some way by someone. We have not yet attempted to use our Festo valve from the 2009 KOP, so I don’t have any first-hand data.
The first thing I was going to say when I saw this post was “don’t”. But it looks like someone else beat me to it.
Save yourself the headaches - use the SMC valves. The :mad: Festos :mad: are notoriously bad.
I, on the other hand, LOVE the Festo’s, so you can mail all those you don’t want to me 
maybe this will help
from the instructions:
Note 1: The minimum supply pressure is 30PSI. Below this pressure, the valve will stay
in the 0 voltage position, regardless of the voltage condition.
ok i will try that, I havent done both yet at the same time. I only either powered up the pneumatics, or powered up the electronics, but not at the same time. I will post bac to tell you if it fixes my problem.
I don’t remember if the light turned on last year or not. Sadly, last year’s robot is in storage for the build season (not enough room) and I can’t tell you if it did or not. It doesn’t matter, though. Put air to the valve and try it. Note that it works best if it is attached to a system so that air pressure is built up in the work side. I don’t know why, but it seemed to be that way when I worked with them. I like the festo valve when I need a lot of air fast. It seems to have a higher througput than the other that came with the KOP in last years. With that said, the others were more intuitive to work and wire up.
The light only turns on when you “fire” the solenoid. It will be off when the Festo is in it’s home position. So the Festo LED should reflect the matching cRIO Solenoid Module LED indicator LED.
i cant test it atm, but i will within the next week, progress is slow for our team, we dont even have a basic driving system hooked up yet 
I am sad to report, our 2009 FESTO valve was DOA. So was our 2007 valve. Our 2008 Festo valve was OK though…I don’t remember 2005 or 2006 Festo valve…
We use SMC valves. I am not sure what they compare in CV rating. Just hooking them up, it seems the Festo flows more CV than the SMC ones we have.
I kinda dis-like the Festo Valves… and I had a really hard time reading the chart on the side of it… I have bad eye sight and its like in blue… to me it was a huge blue blob… but I love how its a single-double acting valve… lol… i love talking about it and confusing people… its like a double negative… almost only not really… lol anyway now im babling just wanted to put in my imput…
Hey that pdf kinda helps but what do you hook the valve to a spike or something?
The valve gets wired to a 2-pin connection on the cRIO’s pneumatic bumper.