Our team has been trying to work with pneumatics and we haven’t used pneumatics since 2010. We understand how all of the components go together and interact but we cant find the correct electrical connector for our valve (the FESTO VUVG), I have looked on festos web site and could not find the the correct connector would be. I have looked at the documents below and they helped me understand how to wire the valves, but I didn’t see any ordering information. If there are any teams that know what connecters we should use and where we could get them please let us know.
Again, this is our first year using pneumatics in 8 years so we would greatly appreciate some help with programing as well. we are using java, we have experience programming, but not with pneumatics. Are there any resources that could help us, or any suggestions for how to get started?
Edit: We also have the same solenoid, so when I get to the shop tomarow, I can send a picture of a working setup if you want. We found there was a small blue dial that you have to turn to change from manual to electronically-controlled mode.
Thank you, the picture would be greatly appreciated! I was also looking at the blue dial and we could not figure out what way it had to be turned to change the setting. How do you change the position of the valve because that is also something that I could not find how to do?
For the valve, we powered up our test bench setup, loaded on the code I linked earlier, pressurized the system, and watched the little red light on the PCM. When the red light is on, power is being sent to the solenoid, so we tried toggling power to the solenoid, then turning the dial with a small screwdriver in the slot and tried toggling power to the solenoid again. After we turned the dial from one extream to the other extream, the solenoid responded to the PCM. I’ll send a couple pictures tomorrow.
The wires go to one of the PCM solenoid ports, the single pneumatic connection comes from the compressor and the double connections go to each end of a pneumatic actuator. Here’s a look at the dial side:
The blue “dial” you call out is a detenting manual override. Pushing in this button will actuate the solenoid manually. For a monostable (aka single solenoid) spring-return valve like this one that means if you turn it while the button is depressed it will lock the solenoid in that position, giving the appearance of putting the valve in “manual” mode since you can’t electrically overcome the physical override.
The Festo bistable (aka double solenoid) valves have the same override/detent features, but rotating them would not achieve a similar effect to whatyou have described for this particular valve, which is why I felt the need to clarify.
