My father’s company will be distributing a new compressor that is FRC 2020 legal. It is heavier and more expensive, however, the specs are much better than the current compressor. It is mostly for teams who heavily rely on pneumatics.
I’m from team 4516 Hyperion, and my cousin, from team 6341 Firestorm Robotics, his father also works at my father’s company. We are trying to spread the word of the new compressor out to the FRC community.
Does the compressor ship with the 1/4” quick connect on the check valve? If so, there might be a problem because FRC rules (for the past few years) have required rigid fittings to connect the pressure release valve, gauge, pressure sensor and manual air release. Edit: just the pressure release valve has to be connected with rigid fittings. Thanks @AllenGregoryIV!
I does have a check valve within the unit, but if I remember correctly the part of the compressor that has the insert for the tube can come off (we have one in our shop I can check later).
EDIT:
Both the check valve, fitting, and muffler (I do not know if it comes with or if we got it) can be taken off. As for vacuum we have not tried this, so I can confirm that it works, but I know there is an inlet port that may serve as that function. This compressor is bigger, and heavier, but in my opinion it does a better job.
Let me know if any one has questions about it, I can try to get an answer.
The issue my team found is that with it, the pressure switch would work inconsistently so we couldn’t use during competition but still useble for a practice board or prototyping just check to make sure pressure doesn’t go to high.
That being said, AM did refund my tesm $75 in store credit for one compressor and we exchanged the other for a Vlair
I understand that the Viair 90C came with rubber grommets built in to prevent extreme vibration. This one doesn’t seem like it does. Obviously, you can get little things like those at Lowes, but does that translate to the fact that this compressor was designed with a lot less vibration? I know it’s impossible for it not to, but is there anyway that I can tell how much it will?
I would suggest telling your Dad that having a CAD file link included on the product page would be really helpful for most FRC teams. Packaging compressors into our CAD is always something to consider, and with this being a larger option, this would be even more important with this new product.
Arguably unnecessary for FRC run-times, our driving/impact loads are just as or more harsh than the compressor vibrations and we already should be using threadlockers (nylon nuts, loctite, vibratight) anyway.
I’d really like to see more tech detail on this, can you/your team connect a pressure relief valve with brass fittings and release photos / schematics (fitting types labeled) of how you did it?
At first glance I was a bit skeptical, but a 60% duty cycle at a $99 price point is a BIG deal.
My issue with the KOP compressor has never been its performance from a cold start, it’s the fact that it gets REALLY hot REALLY fast, due to it’s low duty cycle (and relatively small thermal mass), so its performance drops significantly (and current draw increases) after a few seconds of continuous use.
The dimensions seem to be comparable to the AM 1.1CFM compressors, which should also make packaging on a robot relatively easy. The only major drawback I can see is the weight (5.8 lbs), but if a team is looking at using a lot of pneumatics, it might be worth it.
I’m not sure I would need to use this on a competition robot as generally I wouldn’t want to take the extra 2-3lb hit and don’t really need that level of duty cycle in an FRC match, but this could be great for a practice robot. Last season our compressor needed cool-down time long before our NEO drive motors did from practice sessions.
Regarding to the post with images I posted,
I was just told that it is not good since the pressure relief valve is after the check valve. You need to put a T fitting in place of the quick connect. the fitting is 1/4."
