Thanks for watching this video. Now that this video is a couple years old a couple of the same questions come up a lot in the comments bellow. I've made a part 2 that covers the question you're about to ask. :) Here is a link to part 2 kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Z8uVobl_s6eskWw.html

Just a suggestion... Plumb your condenser directly from the compressor pump through the condenser then into the tank. You'll have much less water in your tank.

I've been a car painter for over 40 years the thing I do is I just crack the petcock leader valve on the bottom of the tank till you hear a hiss and I never have any water build-up in my lines at all😊

I noticed the clamps you used to mount the copper pipes to the wall look like steel. If they are you may run into problems with galvanic corrosion. Eventually the steel will react and create a hole in the pipe where steel is contacting the copper. You should change those out to copper or brass clamps and you'll be good to go. Just thought I'd let you know.

Going from 1/4” tube to 1” tube is actually a 1:16 ratio in area. That means the air velocity ‘practically’ slows down 16 times. That’s an amazing amount of surface area for condensation to happen. I love the overkill!!

We built one for our compressed air system and it works great! Thanks for the suggestion.

Smartly done! Love what you've done there!

I too have a cnc plasma table and have been running this configuration for 4 years. 1" iron pipe with ball valves like yours. It works. Period. It removes and amazing amount of the water and cools the air quite well. I have a larger table than you, and also include a refrigerated air dryer in my air supply loop. It does very little on short jobs, but on high amp, high air usage jobs, the compressor runs a lot and the refrigerated air dryer is needed. Made a huge cut quality improvement.

I would think having a large down section above the valves would allow a spot for the water to build up that isn't inline with the air flow preventing the still water from being carried along with the air. Basically just have a section of pipe run straight down off the T before adding the valve.

You could T all your drain ports at the bottom together with a single lowest horizontal run if you slope the horizontal pipe downwards then you could have just one drain valve. That's about the only improvement I can think of to the flow and ease of use of your system. Looks good.

Thank you, this will fix a whole lot of problems for me in my injection moulding business. Awesome idea and solution

This is very helpful. I agree about getting steel close to Copper. I had a water leak in my house because a nail was 1/8" from my copper water line. Also, I think I will build a supporting frame and then screw the frame to the wall. Thank you for the video.

Here's a thought, how about hydronic baseboard heater tubes with all those aluminum fins to help cool. I'm not sure what pressure they're rated for but most plumbing pipe is rated for 150 psi.

up north a guy posted his install using old hot water baseboard heater piping with the fins on it. woks amazing and got it at a scrap metal yard. also on the intake you put a second filter , It stops that sucking noise so you can stand next to the compressor and even talk.

I thought your video of really good. Natural and easy to follow. Like a normal working man. Not staged like most videos. Appreciate that.

I'll tell you something that's helped me tremendously. Your air compressor sucks air from inside the shop. When you open those you atomized the air and moisture coming out of there. Then your air compressor in your shop sucks that are right back in. I will tell you if you exhaust those outside you will benefit tremendously from it. Just run some lines tying all four of them together and then one exit line going through the wall out above the roof you don't want them asking on the side of your building. Also you can tie the tank drain on the bottom of your tank into that also. Hope that helps period also will eliminate the staining on the wall:-). I am waiting on my langmeyer crossfire Pro should be here sometime before the end of the month.

The condensate drains do work better located on the opposite leg. The moisture will always be running down the pipe walls even when there is no flow and being heavier than air when there is flow it will tend to go in a straight line towards the dirt leg trap while the air will make the turn at the tee. Plumbing and pipefitting 101.

Using the baseboard heat pipes with fins will greatly increase heat dissipation.

Great job! May be a little over kill but look at results, good job sir!

Mount the coils on two horizontal 2 X 4’s to get them off the wall for more air contact. And yes use copper mounting strips.

Stumbled on this video. A dryer was not on my list but now it is. Cheers from Wisconsin.

Ideally you would want the cooler between the compressor itself and the tank. Otherwise you are just pumping wet air into the tank, drying the air before storage is possible is the way to go. 🤠👍 That is where you can take a old compact fridge and use coil of tubing with drain. Then use bucket of water in the fridge and have it cooled down as well. It will help take out the heat much better than just air to air inside the fridge.

Thank you very much, really appreciate your help by sharing your experience

I'm about to invest in a 4x8 plasma table. I'll be building a air dryer like this. Thanks for the video

Instant Subscription!!! Wasn't even looking for this, but have been meaning to address the issue. Thank You!!!

Awesome video man!!!!

Very helpful, Thank you!

I built one of these years ago, using no more than three feet of 1/2" pipe. I have a little squirrel cage blower that blows on it. Works perfect. If the tube stays cool at the far end, then the apparatus is doing it's job.

Yes the larger tubes have a greater surface area, BUT they have a much worse surface area to volume ratio, which is the significant thing when you are trying to remove heat from that volume. Put plainly, a number of thin tubes of equal total volume to a few larger tubes provides much more surface area for that volume to dissipate heat through. Many thin tubes are significantly more efficient at removing heat than a few thick ones.

Thank you so much for doing this video, terrific information.

Cool video. Love the 1" copper pipe idea. I wonder if you could use a "tree-like" structure for the 1" pipes, and use only 1 reservoir (any size) and 1 valve at the very bottom? Or some variation. thanks for posting! :D

I've thought about building one of those.....turned out good nice job

I just went through this nightmare. Finally got a decent compressor of my own and attempted to use different filters to reduce moisture using a gravity sandblasting gun on a truck axle. After several unsuccessful setups, I ended up getting an old DeVilbiss 803643 filter from a coworker. Got a new element for it and zip tied it to my compressor's frame. Ran a 30' spiral hose from the compressor to the filter inlet. Running the $0.75 harbor freight inline plastic filter just before the swivel fitting at the gun. Before I'd get about two hopper loads in before moisture started creeping past all the dumb transluscent dessicant filters I was using. The cheap plastic ones on their own were getting me two or three hopper loads each. After setting up a long enough hose for the water to condense, I can run my blasting gun practically indefinitely. Every bag of media I go down, I dump the tank and filter drain, then let it all charge back up while i swap the cheap plastic filter at the end of the hose. Not going to be my final setup but it works for the budget and space I have right now.

To prevent the galvanic corrosion from the steel clamps, wrap several layers of electricians' tape on the copper. I would also recommend clamping only top OR bottom horizontal tubes to allow for the bit of expansion/contraction of the tubes. Verticle tubes pose no problems. For those wondering if copper can withstand the 150psi, I have been taught that properly soldered copper joints AND the tubing sidewall can normally handle up to the 300psi range. This allows for slightly frozen pipes without rupturing. Cheers from Alberta, Canada.

If I was making that, I would have the pipes running horizontally and slightly stretched so there is a slight fall on each run, just one drain in the bottom. The place I worked at in AU, who manufactured CNC plasma cutters and routers, the budget option for plasma cutters ( rather than a refrigerated dryer) was a toilet roll type dryer, toilet rolls don’t actually work as well, the proper ones are brown and different material. They work remarkably well.

where i Live it was to hard to get 1" copper tubing so i went with 3/4" and about 60' total length, the compressor is in about 90 degree room upstairs here in South Florida, the lines go downstairs to the copper tubing that is in a 70 degree room and then goes into a 50 degree room where it is used to run the equipment, i also I put a cooler and water separator on like many others have done on youtube, the cooler takes out a lot of water, i have not yet hooked up the copper tubing to the system yet but very soon it will be done, when it is done i really expect almost no water in the lines, thanks a lot for the video it helped me a lot, i did all this at my job where i work, we were making so much water compressor works a lot, it is a 60 gal Husky 11.5 cfm

A great idea. I took a 30gal 200psi compressor, and plumbed it into the 35gal tank of my old compressor. It only sees 150 psi since it's rated at 165, but it's plenty, and i almost never have a low pressure problem, and most of the condensation is caught in the second tank. A drain loop in the steel pipe output catches pretty much anything left. But having said that, I could see adding a copy of your setup in the future!!! Now to just over engineer your setup a tad more, and link all the valves to a single handle...😅

Very nice build! Never thought of doing it this way, but I am going to try it. Only advice I have for you. Build a box, cage or separate room for the compressor. There is an extremely low chance, but the tank CAN fail and it will send shrapnel through the shop. Those large compressor tanks are serious bombs. I never trust any of them and at least have a heavy metal cage around them. The explosion will still rupture your eardrums, but it won't send pieces through your body as easily. 90psi filled truck tires send men flying 20 ft. When they come apart.

sounds great i will try it out when i start finishing my shop thx for the info

I have one of these I built about a year ago. It works great! I used about 60 ft of 3/4” copper and my air is 99% dry.

nice little workshop!

These work excellent. The 1" tube is very smart. You can also make a pre-tank separator out of a vehicle condenser and a small tank or drop tube with a valve on the bottom. Basically you take the hard line directly from the compressor pump, attach that with flared fittings to the AC condenser, attach a T at the outlet of the condenser with a valve and a drop tube along the back of the main compressor tank and plumb back into the original tank inlet location at the top. Attach the condenser to the fan/pully cage of the compressor and viola, you keep water out of your main tank as well.

Love this setup. Can you fit a transparent pipir down low so you can see the moisture when it builds up?

just want to thank you, it help us a lot

Great info brother! thanks.

I like it and looks good. A cool tip I have for the compressor is cylindrical or floor mount vibration isolators from grangier. Divide the published compressor weight by four and get the closest match. Never vibrates the floor and literally floats on the isolators. Much quieter.

I have used an air cooled system in the past, they work ok. I now use water cooled system and it just works much better. Mine has 50 foot of 1/2 copper coiled into a 10 gallon barrel with a relief valve at the bottom in the water where water inside the line will collect and is pushed out automatically every time the compressor airs up. You just hear bubbles for 2 or 3 seconds or so after the compressor shuts off. No valves to open and close constantly, just add a bit of water now and then. I also run a single stage air compressor dryer for good measure but it has never shown any signs of moisture where when I ran air cooled the dryer still got a bit of moisture in it. I have run this for about 5 years now and have never had any moisture at all in my tank. I actually scoped inside the tank last summer, it looks shiny and new inside, no rust whatsoever.

I built one per your video and it is amazing! Thank you!

Bravo.............refrigerationd dryer ......desicant beads reuseable.........big tank........cheers

Really great video. Now you gave me the idea to make a HD trans cooler for my RV/bus. The ones sold today are cheap China junk. I will have to braze the fittings thought for durability/vibration.

You could pack the tubes with copper pan scrubbers too. That would increase the surface area dramatically

Install this in a fridge to get a better dewpoint, anything to get a lower temp of the compressed air will condense even more moisture. For a one-time quick project I've thrown a coil of soft copper in a big garbage can and filled it with ice and put a water trap on the outlet.

Replace those valves with solenoids and build another manifold to bring them am back together and piped outside or into a drain. Then you can automate opening the solenoids periodically.

Thanks for the great video. Think I'm going to go with 3/4 inch. Lose 25% of the surface area but I can add an extra 10 ft of pipe for less and save a bunch on fittings. For some reason the local home stores are really proud of their 1" fittings.

Great job

made a simmilar setup years ago. but i used regular 200 mm diameter pipe, about 350 mm long weldig top an bottom to it, air in and out are in the sides at the top, a 200x250mm plate is welded inside it so the air/water mix, chrash into it , and the water get stuck on the plate, and falls down where a drain is, the air runns under the plate and up again at verry slow speed, works just fine, and you can add as many as you need to the system, in series, or everywhere else. we use them at the outlet aswell.

Awesome thank you

If you just barely crack the moisture drain on the bottom of your compressor just enough to hardly hear a small trickle of air the moisture will continuously drain out of the tank and never collect enough to pool at the bottom of the tank. Works great for me and I never have to drain the tank. You ca leave a dry sponge under the valve to collect and dispaiate the condensation.

Putting stainless steel wool in the tubes (not packed to tightly but full) would help the water coalesce inside them. Also having a cheap box fan set on Low blowing on the pipes helps a lot as well. And instead of mounting flat on the wall stand it off by 1/2" so air can circulate all round the pipes.

Very good idea man! Just connect another tank after the pipes.

I'm concerned about getting high volume out of this system since your inlet line is just 1/4" tubing. I like the Tee design; you are right, that angle can help condense moisture. So does cyclone rotation like the moisture separator design. I've thought about making one of these that resides in a fridge, freezer, or even a tub that can be temporarily filled with ice water. As you drop that temperature, more and more moisture will condense out. As others have said, the auto drain for your compressor is worth its weight in gold.

Thanks for the good ideas and a clue on what works... That said, why don't you pull the water out of the circuit starting from the compressor, then put the dry air into the tank, then distribute... Would keep the tank free of water too, correct. Slow down the tank rust?

Nice Set up. 1 critique if you will and perhaps a better mouse trap.. The Catcher tubes should be 4-6" long cause the 2" tubes are a lil too short IMHO. Other than that liked you're idea of the turbulence T and all. If you swap the output of your compressor to the dryer lines and then return via the Tank, you actually virtually eliminate ANY water vapor from your tank which extends its life. I personally added a double separator, macro/micro separators in tandem with an output regulator on the FIRST one and a desiccant dryer all in a single row lineup. My Plasma cutter has never seen a drop of contaminants. I also use it for painting cars/trucks/motorcycle fairings and pieces and it is flawless. I added an double oil tank with a clear glass jar for my air tools that is plug and play via a 3 way switched air flow valve to do air tool work on the aforementioned body parts. The oil is down line of the valve actuator so no danger in oil infused into my dry lines. My 2c worth.

Cool idea....FYI-1/4 - 1" =16xs volume. Twice the diameter of a set line equal 4 x the volume

Nice setup, thanks for sharing. I wonder if you could put pressure relief or pressure check valves at the bottom of the pipes where the condensation collects, instead of the manual valves. I'm not sure there would be enough pressure or if you want to relieve that much pressure... of course it could be regulated. Then they could all connect via tubes to an output drain or condensation tank. 🤔

The next time you build one put an upside down U or drip loop in after the valve of each stage . What you build works by gravity . So adding an upside down drip loop in will catch more water and it will double what you have now . So first stage valve then after that drip loop upside down going to stage 2 valve then going to upside down drip loop .Once your wet receiver is full of water (your tank) in super hot summer it will pay off . Winter is one thing but summer is a bit different .. Oh I will add this in as well . If you have 125 psi in your wet receiver (tank) and only using 30 psi at the other end ? Having a regulator before it hits the part that you built will help a lot . So your tank 125 psi and a regulator 80 to 60 to what you made and after what you made regulator at 30 psi depending on your needs ??? Anytime you slow something down gravity takes over . good video !!

That table is sweet.

I have a CF-Pro on order. I think I might have to look at making one of these cooling rigs for my compressor

You only need 1 valve. Remove all those valves, run a header across the bottom and tee into it at each loop. Run the header and a slight grade towards a valve at the end. Solves your wet wall problem and you only have to release 1 valve.

Hi, What you have made is very good indeed. I would suggest as mentioned the galvanized straps need to go or at least use a barrier between the pipe and the straps.. Also get the tubing off the wall about 3/4" to promote 360 degree circulation.Consider a small fan to blow across your condenser that can be incorporated in the electrical circuit to come on with the compressor and shut off after. I live in S.Florida with 90% humidity most of the year and have had to resort to the above mentioned ideas. Cheers and 73

Nice setup, I'm thinking of using an automotive A/C condenser for this. I want to cool and dry the air before it goes into the compressor tank. I wonder if those Harbor Freight $10 auto drain kits would work on that. You'd have to adapt the fittings onto the end, but then it would be 100% automatic.

Awesome job!!!. Only change I would make is come out of compressor to drier than go into tank. This would keep tank clean and dry.

Good idea to go big because that offsets the pressure drop you would experience adding that many feet to your overall line length.

❤❤ you’re a pay a lot more than that now for an air compressor. I’ve got the cobalt air compressor from Lowe’s which is a two-stage compressor one big piston, and one small piston and it works great. I have no complaints with my air compressor and my air pressure gauge is 6 inches from one side to the other side of the air pressure gauge that way I don’t have to go over directly to the air compressor to read the air pressure gauge and I have a secondary tank tapped into it so when it’s running, it’s actually filling two tanks, a 60 gallon and a 22 gallon air tank❤❤❤❤

3:38 real fact, and i worked in a machine shop so i know whats in the air of a shop, As well as worked with auto painters. You machine cut grind weld you put a lot of dust and smoke as well as oil in the air in your shop, the compressor should be outside the shop you can build an outdoor insulated compressor shed. Then pipe it back into the shop because all that stuff in the air gets into your compressor pumps eating the cylinder walls.

Again thank you

The cross sectional area of a circle grows with the square of the radius but the circumference only grows with the radius so from a surface area perspective larger diameter tube should be less effective since the volume increases much more than the surface area. In terms of pressure drop it's another story though.

I use a collector with stub out ends. It offers more area to collect

I realize it’s an old video but nice plan with the 1” copper. As others have said steel fittings in copper pipe and clamps are going to eventually cause an issue, the reducers and all are available in copper and a few feet of #10 copper wire would strap that down against two or three horizontal 2x4’s you get better air circulation behind the copper and eliminating the vibration saves the pipe.

Yeah, I did the same except longer copper tubes and L-type copper (not the M-type which is the thin wall regular). Works like a Swiss clock. Also, I took square wood beams 4”x4” approximately and drilled 1” holes at the copper pipe distances center to center. Then cut them along so the holes would be split. Then I clamped it over top portion and bottom portion of this copper assembly. This made the structure solid and easy to manage. Simply bolted it to the wall.

You could probably use 1/2 copper and those aluminum snap on fine for radiant heaters to get more heat flux cheaply.

If you also put a regular just before this in side of the copper pipe and drop the presser down a bit expanding gas reduces temperature condensing more water

Genuis!

I definitely need to build something like this. Im always on pops to drain the compressor but he doesnt. Campbell hausfeld 60 or 80 gallon(lol i always forget) single stage. Its in the heated part of the shop, but i usually work in the unheated area. This winter was so mild ,it was 38f for most of the time in the work area. Totally awesome to me ,as i work outside so that was almost t shirt weather to me 😂. Anyway,after 5-8mins my angle die grinder blows ice chunks and gets slower and slower, ao i stop and go drain the tank and put some oil in the tool and go another 10mins and repeat. I did stick a couple of engine heater magnets on it for 3-4 days with the drain opened and that helped quite a bit. Finally,i took about a shot glass worth of 91% isopropyl and dumped it in and thats been the best solution so far. Im tired 😂, i want something permanent like this (so i also saved the vid so whwn i finally get around ro it ill rewatch) Thanks man ! Edit: I just had a brain flatulation! I've got an old craftsman compressor with a dead compressor,I wonder if it's worth putting that in the unheated shop area and running the line to that instead of running off the line ? Maybe it would help some of the moisture issue as it's like a big separator and accumulator.

I have made one of those and never had any problems Spraying cars base clear ALL GOOD!!! just added automatic electric valve( Automatic Electronic Timed Air Compressor Condensate Auto Drain Valve) at the bottom of the compressor tank so it drops water out automaticly and dont accumulate inside getting tank rusty.

Nice project. Even better would be to use Rasberry Pi on the valves and automate them. However... there is good enough!

Running your dirt leg that way atomizes the water droplets thus moving down the line. Smoother flow= more condensing of water on walls= better efficiency

I am in the process of making one of these. I am installing automatic drain valves instead of manual ball valves at the bottom of each run. This way I won't have to remember to drain them. I am also installing one on the air compressor tank drain.

You could get an aftercooler to install on the back of the compressor and use the pump and motor wheel as fans to pull air through the aftercooler, the moisture will then condense into the bottom of the tank. Then drain the water weekly.

To be honest. I would have put a silica gel filter on the compressor intake. Then on the high pressure side I would have installed 3x filter units rated to the max PSI of the high side. One filter would be filled with a particulate catching media and activated charcoal. The next filter would be silica gel beads then the last filter would be filled with zeolites aka molecular sieve. This is the exact set up I use for my plasma torch . In the winter get dew points in the air as low as -5 F, in the summer I see an average dew point between 13f and 25f, depending on the temp of the air. I also use a very similar setup for my pcp air rifle compressor. However the dryer for the pcp air rifles is much more expensive due to the need to have filters that can withstand 4000 psi without failing. With the above recommendations you would save space, time for not that much more cost wise especially if you count build time as money.

I wonder if you used sections of baseboard heat if the fins would help with cooling?

I bet someone covered this for you already, apologies if so 1/4 tube = .25^2 * Pi = ~.05sqin 1" tube = .5^2 * Pi = ~.785sqin That's a 16x factor, so good job! (And going from rubber hose to copper tube is another increasing factor)

If you have room, 2” black pipe works fantastic and it also holds a large volume of air. Put your air filter at the outlet

Get the pipes 4" off the walls and run a fan over them not behind the compressor it will work even better., We used 1/2" soft copper pipe and bents it around a bucket a buddie was an hvac technician i gave him the idea to do this he was only hooking it up, however he didnt add a drip trap. But just the coils cools the air off enough to condensed the water out of the air, drop that in a bucket of water it gives off its heat even more, you can use a 55 gallon plastic barrel for the coil if you need to just add ice water, or run the copper tubes under ground where the soils 57 dgr year round Thats basically a refregrated air dryer. You can do a exchage unit and use a antifrez to pull the heat off the A coil. Speaking of you can just use an A coil and hvac blower motor. But id use a cars condensed unit its high presure also.

I'm building one. I am going to use ether 3/8 or 1/2 tube and not that tall. I'm going to mount it on the compressor in front of the large compressor pulley with the slanted fins for air flow. I am going to connect it along the bottom to one long manifold with one dump valve. It will ether work or not lol. I am still going to mount a filter and desiccant dryer along with the regulator. There is one dude who used a older ford F250 air conditioner condenser mounted on the guard in front of his large finned pulley. Might do that is I can find one cheap enough. I just bought a plasma cutter so got to get this built.

Look up automatic electric tank drain kit and buy it. We use those on building pneumatics religiously

You could put some really thin metal sheet where the valves discharge. It will help stop pushing the moisture into your drywall.

the reason that you aren't getting any moisture to your water separator/filter is because whatever amount of drying you're doing is achieving a dew point slightly under your ambient. this doesn't mean the air is dry, just that it's dry enough that it won't condense out mechanically without a drop in temperature. you probably still have air that at your ambient temperature is anywhere from 20-95% humid. however the way humidity works is that if it's under 100% saturated the air will hold that moisture in it's gaseous state. to get truly dry air, ie lowering the relative humidity you need to dry the air at a lower temperature than ambient. then once you acheive a dewpoint of 3-4 degrees C, it's relative humidity at ambient will be very very low. what you created with the copper is a water separator. similar to what you bought from SMC.

A lot of box store / flooring vendors give vinyl scrap away for free. A small piece of vinyl flooring glued to the wall behind the ball valves… just an idea

Отличный охладитель для компрессора👍