Thanks for the comments!

It's all about the details.

Beautiful build

I hate imperial units, but dang, thanks for reminding me that it could always be worse hahaha

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. I admittedly added the flow valves after the fact, because it was slamming open and closed too fast.

@@RobertCowanDIY yes your approach is right and will totally work. But in case you prefer replace it and have a cleaner set up you can search for them. I think in most solenoid valve you can unscrew the exhausts and replace it with whatever you want as long the thread pitch is the same. You can find the adjust al exhaust on amazon, AliExpress, bangood ecc...

And in this case, the parts weren't even available, I had to make custom mounds for the cylinder no matter what.

Mechanical solenoids are pretty much always a disappointment, they just don't output enough force or consume an unreasonable amount of energy. A pneumatic system effectively only uses energy during the actuation period. Of course, you could trigger a movement solenoid then have a locking solenoid and etc (this particular application probably doesn't need that), but that's starting to look like a mountain of bandaids. If you already run shop air, adding some cylinders to the existing infrastructure is much lower effort.

What Troy said. They use a TON of current for any reasonable amount of force. I'm using them for another project right now, and they're pretty awful and every time I go to use them, I decide to go a different route. They are good for moving very small loads only. A linear actuator is of course another option, but something with a 6" stroke would be somewhat expensive, and then you need a controller. BUT, if you wanted something a bit simpler and didn't want to mess with air, a linear actuator would be the way to go. I have a 'linear actuators 101' video that's quite popular, I just didn't want to run power, have a motor controller, and then program in the logic (you'd need something to tell it when to extend and when to retract). This was a bit more 'plug and play'.

Thank you Troy and Robert. What I heard, is: * efficiency of power is much better in pnuematics * you would probably have to run power and/or air tubes with either choice * price seems like a wash From my perspective, I try to minimize maintenance and points of failure and/or comolexity, thus my question. I have never had an air compressor that I left running or even pressurized full-time because of condensation in the tank and slow leaks in the plumbing that would make the dog bark at 3am as the compressor turns on, so automating around compressed air seems inconvenient at best. This application, fully automated, would be operated by the CNC controller which means I don't want to mess with my compressor first (close bleed valve and turn it on). I would also be automatically turning on the dust vac at the same time, including a slow-start circuit. Perhaps a simpler blast gate design would be the design feature that drives a simpler, more efficient and less expensive way of actuating the gate. www.thingiverse.com/thing:2573041

@@KarlMiller Pneumatic cylinder systems tend to be extremely low maintenance. There's really only two moving parts: the sliding valve and the piston in the cylinder (the blast gate is moving regardless). Both of those are usually oiled by the air, so basically no maintenance. On top of that, all the motion is linear and easier to predict wear. If you've ever seen an episode of How it's Made, all of this kind of motion is handled by cylinders when possible for exactly those reasons. I'm fairly certain Robert's solution could be accomplished for around $40 in parts (I build robots with similar components) and what you linked could be done a bit cheaper, at the risk of increased maintenance and being more "fiddly" over time. As a general comment, I would hope most home shops just have their compressor on a timer to switch off at night.

@@troy4393 thanks for your thoughts. I just don't see the benefit or reliability of twelve air connections to move one small piece of metal a few inches. Too many parts and motors involved in a very simple task, especially when the alternative is a five dollar servo and a 3d printed arm.

I use a Prusa i3 MK3S. It's my recommended printer. It's not cheap, but it's the first printer that's truly 'set and forget'. It just works, and it does what I want it to do. It's worth the hype and if you can justify the price, just get it. I'm just waiting for their large volume one to come out, and I'll get one of those too.

I'm not sure why people would say that the chips are a fire hazard. I guess if they get hot enough, they could burn the wood chips/dust? But for cutting aluminum, it's hard to get the chips THAT hot. They are pretty much room temperature when they leave the workpiece. Also, sucking them through the dust collector ducts cools them significantly, and very quickly. I don't really see an issue here. I put about 5 pounds of chips into my dust bin, which also has quite a bit of fine MDF dust, without issue.

That's how I feel as well.

This video is a few weeks old and the dust collector wasn't fully installed yet. So far, it works great. Under full suction, it can still open, just a bit of a struggle with 2K CFM pushing against it. Actual real life workability of 3d printed parts? I wouldn't worry about it. They hold up good, as long as they're not exposed to UV. I have other little 3d printed parts around the house and such, and they've held up for years, as long as you design it right.

@@RobertCowanDIY Toally agree, and its not like its a huge hassle to replace them if they fail. you printed them in the first place right!

The Avid CNC controller just has 120V outlets on the bottom. I just plugged the solenoid into one of those. There's no low voltage connection, that's just already taken care of with a solid state relay in the controller. I could bypass those and go directly into a 12V solenoid, but since it's there, I just used the 120V outlet instead.

Nice!

Did you post the remix on Thingiverse. Thanks in advance

I just used it yesterday! It still works. My only issue is I don't always have enough pressure to activate the solenoid (because I turned off the compressor and forgot to turn it back on). But it actually works exactly as expected years later.

@@RobertCowanDIY nice. All my parts just arrived excited to get it going. I will need to learn the Mach4 part but not worried about it. Thanks again for a great vid

@@mikerainwater528 Nice, good luck!

Nevermind I just seen it's noted at a 150mm on thingaverse listing. Thanks printing now

Glad you got it!

Very true. I didn't do this because I don't necessarily want the dust collector cycling too much, and if I accidentally have the M command in my code, I don't want it turning on and off a lot. This isn't great for the motor, so I just control it manually still.

You might want to look into making a spring loaded fare that will open if the vacuum get to high too keep from collapsing your piping. Some of the jobs that I worked at had gates at the end of the lines to help stop the problems with to high of vacuum on the lines. The gate was just disk with a spring load that could be adjusted to keep it from opening when it was not needed.

I think 1/4'?

@@RobertCowanDIY wild cause I bought the ones off the link you have in the description and I can not for the life of me get 1/4" tubing to fit inside...

The files are in the description, as mentioned in the video.

Is that not what he was doing? Maybe I didn't see right

Sounds like I might need to move the flow control ports to the exhaust side. But from a plumbing standpoint, it's in the same path right?

Hi Robert are your flow controls directional? Do they allow full flow one way? If so have that direction on the outlet direction of the cylinder otherwise just make sure that you control the cylinder speed by the flow going in and not the flow coming out

I disagree! The original servo-drive one was very weak and unreliable. But, I could have just used a string or something I guess.

@@RobertCowanDIY haha yeah, i was just thinking a 2x2 and a hook.