Was wondering if anybody has ever used a full-intergrated air-pack system from DMFB for their air horns. Have one sitting around the shop and was wondering if it would work to fill a small air tank or not. Don’t need it to fill fast, but need to fill a tank. Thanks
Welcome
I searched google and didn’t find anything.
Can you elaborate? or post a link?
At least we can look at its specs.
Here’s a web site with what I have. Just wondering if it could be set up to use or not. www.jost.co.za/[b]airpack[/b].asp
Thanks
Hi Steve. I’ve never seen one of these before and didn’t see any information relating to it’s pressure capabilities from that link. If its capable of producing 120-150 PSI it might be feasible for horns. Your best bet might be contacting the manufacturer and finding out how large of a tank it will fill reliably.
No - I would say that you wouldn’t be able to use this for an air horn or to fill a tank. We deal a lot with hydraulic gear through our work. It looks to me like this is a source of compressed air for actuating a hydraulic valve through pneumatics (i.e. compressed air) rather than an electrical actuator.
Think of it like this… you got a truck with a tipper mechanism, which is hydraulic. There will be a valve which you manually press to control the hydraulic flow through the actuator ram which lifts up/down. You can get these valves in either:
- Manual only (i.e. a lever or button)
- the above, plus an electro-actuator (i.e. a solenoid) which lets you use a push button (e.g. through a remote panel or pendant) to control the same valve
- or… the above, but with a pneumatic actuator.
What you’ve got there is a power pack that is designed for those pneumatic actuators.
Bigger commercial trucks would have their own air supply. I’m thinking this is targeted at the smaller truck category which doesn’t have a tank and compressor on board - so you’d install one of these to allow you to then have compressed air system for actuating other hydraulic systems through valves as mentioned above.
I bet the unit wouldn’t be very cheap either .
Thanks for the answer. That sure does answer what I was asking. I think I might play around with it to see what it can do. Free junk hanging around the shop so if it burns out, it’s no skin off my knuckles.Thanks again.
DBO - Just out of curiosity, why would one use a pneumatic valve requiring an air supply and all the things that go with said air supply … rather than an electric valve that simply ties into +12v and has a button (which is a hell of a lot less complicated)? Risk of fire with electrics near whatever flows through the valve, perhaps? That’s about the only scenario I can come up with where it seems to make some sense as to why electric valves would be avoided…
Please enlighten me!
Often horses for courses as they say. Some people like using air power, some prefer electronics. In reality it’s often a mix anyway. You can get the job done either way really.
Apart form the reason you already mentioned (i.e. Flammability), the air systems are less prone to interference and can often be easier to set up. They also tend to be more rugged/reliable - electrical actuating solenoids tend to have a lower life span. Wiring relay control circuits is not always as simple as it sounds. With a system like the one above, I’d say the pump pack probably has several outputs (i.e. to cater for at least two actuator functions). It’ll be a modular solution (panel box, pump etc) so it’s a lot more plug and play. If you have to duplicate the same thing with electrics you are paying for an electrical engineer/installer to design a circuit, plus all the wiring, bits etc. I’m sure there’s competing systems out there that are all done with electronics as well.
Reasonable enough. Thanks for taking a few moments to share and educate. 
Welcome to the forum Steve.
Using air in a volatile environment seems obvious but I wonder why a few customers are using our compressor to run pneumatic water pumps for ponds or reservoirs in a safe environment.
What kind of pumps are they? Could be just fewer moving parts (e.g. venturi type pump has no moving parts). Pump impellers will have a much shorter service life than a quality air compressor piston - especially if it’s sucking dirty water.
The brands or types already in use were not revealed. A potential customer wants ours to air start “Gorman-Rupp Prime Air Priming Assisted (Dry Prime) Pumps”.
That explains it.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen the movie “Mad Max 2” where Max hops in the brown Mack semi-truck they plan to use to haul the fuel from the refinery. The motor in that semi is an air start style so it’s not using the traditional electric starter.
Air up the system with a small gas motor hooked to a compressor like the Oasis, press a button, and the engine cranks. The nice part is these engines turn over much faster than using the traditional starter and you don’t have fried 24VDC starters.
Same principle, different application.
-Kris
Had a look at those Gorman-Rupp (PrimeAire) pumps. Nice units.
See the blue upright container sitting on top of the suction inlet. They use a venturi system to prime the pump. The pump impeller basically can’t create gas vacuum, so if you’re sucking intermittent liquid or have the pump in a higher position than your fluid (e.g. a pond), normally you’d have to manually prime the pump by filling the intake with liquid before the main pump can take over. The venturi gets around that by injecting air pressure into the inlet where it then creates enough vacuum to suck the liquid into the pump.
You guys must be pretty chuffed to get an application for the Oasis on that front. Priming pumps like that would need a lot of air and a highly reliable supply mechanism. If they are placing Oasis compressors on top off pumps like that then it really goes to show how capable and reliable your compressors really are.
We haven’t gotten an order yet and I’m not the type to be a nuisance but I may be with this one.