It's all fun and games until...

[elanjacobs]

...you have to locate and fix an air leak in here:
IMAG1335[1].jpg

I've narrowed it down to the bottom row, 3rd or 4th from the right and it will continue to leak until something actually stops working

[KBs PensNmore]

Jeez what a nightmare, glad it's you and not me.
Kryn

[DavidG]

Spray bottle of soapy water. (if no power colocated)

[Pittwater Pete]

Mate, you had better get some air line and fitting in for spares. I had the same problem and once I'd fixed it, I kept getting broken air lines every second week for months. I guess the air lines were getting old and brittle.
BTW, Festool have all the air fittings you'll need for the CNC.

Pete.

[elanjacobs]

Spray bottle of soapy water. (if no power colocated)

Unfortunately that's not an option, they're all solenoid valves so there are power leads running to each one.

Mate, you had better get some air line and fitting in for spares. I had the same problem and once I'd fixed it, I kept getting broken air lines every second week for months. I guess the air lines were getting old and brittle.
BTW, Festool have all the air fittings you'll need for the CNC.

Pete.

Got a whole box of spare fittings, might look in to getting a couple of spare solenoid valves as well.

Finding the leak wasn't the problem, it's just that it's right in the middle behind everything else and I don't want to spend an hour or 2 pulling everything apart to get to it. It's only a slow leak and nothing seems to be affected. Might put it on the list of things to do when we're quiet.

[Lappa]

See if you can lay your hands on an Ultrasonic leak detector. Some auto air condiitionrr repairers use them when nitrogen testing for leaks in Auto A/C systems

[elanjacobs]

See if you can lay your hands on an Ultrasonic leak detector. Some auto air condiitionrr repairers use them when nitrogen testing for leaks in Auto A/C systems

Thanks for the idea. I know where the leak is, it's just not bad enough to warrant 2 hours of my time.
I've gotten pretty good at finding leaks in the rats nest of hoses by just putting my hand in and following the breeze, got 2 others like that already

[Dirk_Pittwater]

Mate, you had better get some air line and fitting in for spares. I had the same problem and once I'd fixed it, I kept getting broken air lines every second week for months. I guess the air lines were getting old and brittle.
BTW, Festool have all the air fittings you'll need for the CNC.

Pete.

Dad (^) got close with the name of the supplier of air fittings and hoses.

They are called Festo.

Ours usually start to leak or split open when we are flat out trying to get things done. Let's just say I've gotten fast at replacing them.

Worth while replacing them even if it's a pain before it becomes a problem and starts effecting something when you really need the machine.

Good luck.

Dirk.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[elanjacobs]

Yep, I know it's Festo

I'll have a look through the pneumatic plans and see what this one is connected to to see how much of a disaster failure will be. It's been slow leaking for months and nothing has been noticeably affected.
We're flat out at the moment, so any maintenance that isn't mission critical is on the back burner.

[Thylacene]

Electrical contact cleaner in a spray can can be substituted for the soap and water, not quite as visual as soapy water, and you need to be quick as it is just solvent and evaporates quickly, but can be used near solenoids with no issues.

[Kuffy]

pneumatics on those machines dont do very much that is overly critical. Things like operating the positioning pins (which would be obvious when it doesnt work), or the blower in the spindle and tool change carriage (also obvious because you wouldnt hear air blowing when it should).

the only thing that springs to mind that might be an issue would be the Z axis compensation thingo when the machine is cantilevered out at full reach on the Y axis. this would probably have the cut deeper at y=800 than y=0. and even with this, it would probably throw an error long before any serious dramas eventuated.

if you find the culprit hose, grab and shove it into the air fitting as it is possible it has worked loose or never fitted properly in the first place. if that doesnt work, take it out, cut 15mm off the end and shove it in there again.

[elanjacobs]

Well that does make me feel a bit better about leaving it and I always wondered what that Z-axis compensation was for.
Only thing is, it's not leaking where the hose is connected; it's leaking out of the back of electro-valve itself. Had the same thing under the table at the front, but that one doesn't go anywhere now that we've done the flatbed conversion so I just took that set of fittings off and capped it. I did open it up to see what was wrong and I think I could see a small stress fracture which would have let a small amount of air leak past the switch.

[Ger21]

I've got a nasty leak on our Morbidelli that's right in the middle of an area that looks like your picture. As long as it keeps running, I'm not touching it. If it stops running, I'll have the boss pay a technician to fix it.

[elanjacobs]

I've got a nasty leak on our Morbidelli that's right in the middle of an area that looks like your picture. As long as it keeps running, I'm not touching it. If it stops running, I'll have the boss pay a technician to fix it.

I went and found the code on the switch in the electrical and pneumatic system books to find out what it controlled (thanks for the help Kuffy) and discovered that this one is actually rather important; it controls the pneumatic support of the router head, so failure = bad.

I suggest you do the same; if it's a critical switch, a couple of hundred dollars to fix it now could save a few thousand dollars in damage.