P N E U M A T I C S
CRACKING THE CODE ON EXISTING PNEUMATIC FITTINGS
Here are some tips to properly identify pneumatic fitting and component sizes when working on or retrofitting existing older machines.
Kevin Kakascik • Technical Marketing Engineer, AutomationDirect
It’s just another typical day in your operations office, located right off the manufacturing floor. Demand for the company’s product is very high and the entire production team is working along at peak efficiency. In the recent months since this spike in demand, there really hasn’t been any unplanned downtime and that’s a good thing, because you really can’t afford that right now. 42
FLUID POWER WORLD
6 • 2020
Of course, your optimism is interrupted when you hear a loud “POP” followed by a sustained “HISS.” Feeling like you have just been punched in the gut, you quickly walk out to the production floor where activity has ceased, and equipment is sitting idle. At the beginning of the production line near the first machine you see the maintenance supervisor with a push-to-connect fitting in his hand. He says the fitting won’t hold the tubing, and a replacement fitting he pulled from stock won’t thread into the existing hole. His parting comment sounds ominous, “I don’t know how this happened, it’s just always worked for years with no problems, and now this is some kind of weird fitting.” A senior maintenance technician with years of experience walks up just in time to hear the tail end of the conversation. He remembers the day this machine was put into production and asks to see the fitting. After a few moments of inspection he
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