cylinder

Are you talking pneumatics, hydraulics, a liquid (e.g. water) storage cylinder, or what? Please be more specific.

Pneumatics

Fill with Helium and check with a sniffer. The helium/Ni mixture depends on the size of acceptable leak and the pressure.

Soapy water sprayed on to the devices. Leaks will bubble up

I like that!

Agreed. I've been factory commissioning a bit of pneumatically-actuated kit (my PLC-based control system) for the last 3 days. Moaned to the 'air' guys about escaping air hissing - their standard diagnostic is a jar of bubbly stuff and a paintbrush - plus a length of 8mm hose used as a 'listener'.

Sort of like the screwdriver in the ear trick!

I like to mix a little dish detergent in water in a spray bottle. If put on stream you can direct it to where you think one may be. Plus the stream can get in all the nooks and crannies

I'll suggest it to the 'air' guys tomorrow. They've been in the game forever, but there are always new wrinkles to pick up that may make work/life easier. Cheers.

If possible I'd prefer to immerse the thing in water. I once had a slow puncture and took the car to a tyre place. The guy said they couldn't find it. I asked how he checked and he said with some sort of aerosol spray. From the rate of pressure loss it was easy to estimate that it was losing several 1mm³ bubbles/sec and would have shown up in no time on immersion test. So instead of doing the obvious thing they used a more expensive "high-tech" solution that didn't work. It was a company car so I left them to it. But a tyre repair shop with no water tank available - how ridiculous is that?

That's my rant for the day, anyway.

Cheers.........Codey

If it is small enough, stick it under water and operate it! Simple.

Hello Guest,

If you are from Cumbria, and have mis-spelled the word, look for these

Kind Regards....