water seperator for painting

[splicer]

Rudi asked me for plans for a water seperator and as I'm very limited in my picture posting abilities I'll explain it the best I can. to remove moisture from air lines one must CONDENSATE the moisture and COOL the air. Run your air hose (or metal) to the ceiling of your shop and connect to a steel or copper pipe. (metal condensates) Run the metal pipe down the wall near floor and up again creating a U shape to a 4' level and re-connect to air hose. At the bottom of the U shape metal pipe install a tee fitting and a short piece of pipe with a valve for draining collected water. The pros reccomend a min. of 25' of metal piping for proper cooling and condensating but with homeowner compressors I wouldn't think this would apply. metal piping should be a min. 3/4" dia.(per the pros) None of this is carved in stone.....everyones cirmstances are different....just remember the more metal the better effect. Get creative! I've talked to a guy that drilled a hole in the lid and in the bottom of a 5 gal. bucket,coiled soft copper in it, put his tee and drain at the bottom, ran a short vertical from the low end (output) and filled it with ice before he painted. (he swore by this) If anyone knows of anything different.....please share, this might get good. The web's full of ideas and pictures.

[Rudi]

Rick:

Excellent Will try to sketch from your description.

[allenlook]

Perhaps the pressure drop going from 3/8 hose to 3/4 pipe (regardless of the pipe material) would cool the air and condense the moisture out of it a bit anyway.

[Dale51]

Stay away from most of the soft or as we call it refrigerator copper tubing.
It is very thin walled & will not stan pressures over 75 psi.
Read the box it comes in to see what pressure it will stand.

The very best seperator I have ever seen was a used compressor tank
mounted 25' from the comp. with a auto air drier mounted in the middle.
After using it for 5 hours it had 0 water in the tank nor did it put any in the filter on the DA or the paint gun.
The air drier runs on 12 volts & is off a old 18 wheeler cost about 25.00 from a junk yard.

[pup]

I just put this on the HVLP post yesterday. The copper tubing in the 5 gal bucket does work. I used about 25 feet of 3/8 thick wall tubing. Come out of the compressor into the bucket, coil the tubing, come out and connect it to a water trap. The ones that have a drain in the bottom. Connect hose to water trap. Fill bucket with water. The water will cool the hot air and condense the water in the tubing and the trap will collect the water. I did not use ice the water worked for me. I used this with 2 small compressors both running to paint and DA sand with. This was the only thing I found to work using these compressors. Pup

[bobburke]

The ice in the bucket work well for me. The only thing different I do is put a clear Goldenrod filter dirrctly after the bucket. This has a screw on jar just like a cub sediment bowl that collects the condensed water.

[tglass]

does anyone have or know where to get a picture of a compressor water seperator? I'd like to build something to clean the line out of the compressor. I like the sounds of the U shaped one, but not sure how to build it.

[splicer]

tglass, get on a search engine and type in air line water trap, water seperator, moisture trap, moisture seperator, and you will find what your looking for. Also auto painting websites, paint gun webs, paint shop webs.......one of these should help you find a picture and/or layout of one.