SpudFiles

Hello Everybody,

I attempted a search but could not find any information about what to do. yesterday my neighbor and myself finished out Pneumatic Tennis Ball launcher and attempted to fire it, on the first shot it just rolled out of the barrel and continued to do this every time we fired, so we decided to do some research and we decided it was because we were using the solenoid that came with the valve. We tried adding more voltage (a total of 5 9v batteries in a series, but that did not help at all). So I need to find a way to make it so I can modify the valve to release all the air at once instead of slow bursts like what is happening now. We have the Rainbird 200PGA 2" valve. I looked at the how-to and all that stuff but all the valve that was on there had a flat top, ours has a huge twist crank type of thing, what would be the best way to go about modding our valve? if you need any more information please ask.

Thanks,
Adam

http://www.spudfiles.com/forums/no-dril ... t2497.html

Like that?

Alright yea thats what I am talking about, sorry for not seeing that. And another question, i have heard that blow guns are bad for larger valves such as the one we are using. What should we use as a pilot valve?

Use a 3/4" ball valve, or a smaller sprinkler valve and then a blowgun.

alright. I still do not understand how this works still though, would you mind explaining exactly what the modification does and how we would set up the ball valve and blowgun combo thing?

Sorry for the questions.

The modification vents the air from the pilot chamber faster than the original solinoid could ever hope to do. this is due to the fact that its a larger hole to pilot through. if you read that link i gave you it should explain it seeing as thats what its there for...

Ok i see how it works but since we will be having the ball valve to a blow gun is where I am confused now. So we have the barb going out of the valve and were do we put that on the valve and then connecting the valve to the blow gun? I know how to do it if it is just a blow gun but with two of the pilot valves I don't know what to do.

oh ok. I thought the suggestion was using either a ball valve to a blow gun or a sprinkler valve to a blow gun. Ok I see what is being said now.

Nope, 'cos as you've worked out you then have two valves making one redundant.....

HTH,

Michael

Ok so I am most likely going to get the ball valve. now the next part is confusing me, since the ball valve has two openings and then the valve what do I do? Like I tap into the diaphram with the barb and then using vinyl tubing to the ball valve correct? Do I need the ball valve to be capped on both sides? Also when I am putting air into it, the ball valve is supposed to be closed right? If someone has a picture of a sprinkler valve that uses a ball valve in place of the blow gun, that would be great.

Once again, I am sorry about all the questions, I just want to make sure I understand everything correctly before I start doing stuff to my valve.

Ok i got almost everything figured out but one last thing now, do we use 1/4" vinyl tubing or 3/4"?

i wouldnt use tubing at all i would get a brass nipple and connect the ball valve directly other wise its strange to open just with you hands. BTw what pressures are you useing

I don't know what pressures we are using, we are just experiementing as of now, I wouldn't imagine more than 100psi. With the design of our gun (we have it set up on a cart thing so it looks like an artillery piece), it would be strange to have it connected directly to the valve but we will do it for better results. So I should be getting 3/4" brass nipples.

Alright we got everything working, we ended up using a 1/2" ball valve with 1/2 ID tubing. Right now there is a small leak where the barb is but we are working on fixing that. And we test launched it with a small amount of pressure from a bike pump but don't know what pressure we were at due to the fact that there was no pressure gauge, we are trying to find a neighbor who has an air compressor that we can use to fill up our huge chamber (we have 4 ft of 4" PVC).