Timing Flow Control Valve - Does This Exist?

Hi Nathanial,

My suggestion is to simply use a straight forward Air Actuated valve with Spring Return.

You've said you can turn air on and off. Time the Air Supply to come on with when you want the valve to open ?

Is there another reason why you need the air to come on first, then a period of time later move the valve position ?

Kind Regards,

Anthony

Yes, the air will be activated by a solenoid upstream of this air-actuated valve. Downstream of this valve are two different air knives. The reason for re-directing the air stream is because I need the full 90 psi to go in two directions. I don't have enough room inside the mill to run two pipe lines without creating interference with the tool; thus I need one air knife to run, and then the other. Thanks for your help.

Numerous timed relays, timing relays, and timers exist. Solenoid-operated pneumatic valves exist, and are extremely common, being used throughout industry to control pneumatic devices.

It may be hard to find the two combined into a single unit that does just what you want it to do. Usually, electrical control (such as timing of events) is generally done by an electronic controller of some sort (such as a PLC). The electronic controller then feeds a control signal to a solenoid operated pneumatic valve to accomplish the pneumatic task.

However, here is an example of a "pneumatic valve with timer" (although this one is simply a two way valve (on, off) rather than a three way (a or b). So there may be a valve and timer combo just like you want, but it could take some digging. Finding the timer and valve separately would be easy, however.

That I know there are no valves like your description.

Electronic timer + electric valve could be the best solution...

But if you want a full pneumatic system (without electric parts) you can use a pneumatic timer: variable resistence+reservoir, it's behaviour is like a RC circuit. You can use a 3/2 air actuated valve with spring return You plug the main air inlet to the pneumatic timer and the output of the reservoir to the air-actuated valve port. When the air is turned on, it exits ooutlet port 1 but meanwhile the pressure in the reservoir rises; when the pressure is enough to swhitch the valve the flow air is in the outlet port 2. When the supply air is turned off you have to discharge the reservoir.

How big of a valve are you looking for? There are some valves that exist like this, again depending on the size of the valve. As far as the functionality, it would probably require some electronics to work as you mentioned, or if you have a PLC or other master control device, this could easily be done.

Sounds like you may need a flow switch that when true starts a timer, at the end of the timer, the valve changes to the other port and when the flow switch goes false, the valve returns to the original position. Is that right?

1/2". And yes you are right about the flow switch process.