PTS Flowbench Forum

Anyone have any designs on how to do the checkvalves on the motor intakes?

I have an idea with some PVC and a ball, idea being to allow only turning on some of the motors without the motors that are off counterrotating and/or to save energy from having so much of the depression bleed back into the plenum.

Anyone got a good cheap solution? I don't like having to turn on ALL of my motors for everything but the lowest flows.. Would like to alleviate that.

Have you seen the ones Bruce sells?

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Click on a pic.

Nope, been completely new to the forum.. however, I bought a 4 of the Harbor freight speed controls, so I think I will modify them and gang them together on a common shaft ie stack them, one speed control for every 2 motors, to control a total of 8 motors.

So, this should keep me from popping the breaker and give me some fine control without having to use the check valves. May also take some of the stress off the motors too.

I have an early MSD style bench, but, luckily I saw and fixed all the issues with it ie extra bulkheads internally, sandwiched orifice plate, sandwiched side exhaust doors, etc, but I somehow missed the fact that that the motors that were off would be bleeding air backwards into the low pressure plenum. DOH!

The bench is very repeatable and accurate, however, this has just always been an annoyance esp if you start the motors staged because the other motors are already turning backwards then you try to start them forward its definitely no bueno for the amount of stress on the shafts and expellers.

The speed control should be able to rectify this issue by starting all the motors slowly, then, increasing the pressure gradually until its where I want it.

I bought a 4 of the Harbor freight speed controls, so I think I will modify them and gang them together on a common shaft ie stack them, one speed control for every 2 motors, to control a total of 8 motors.

The Harbor Freight speed control works good with one motor but may get hot controlling two motors. It depends on the amperage rating of the motors.

Ray

Yeah, thats what I thought..I have a few more I can scavenge (I think a total of 6) from the shop until I can come up with the money for the PTS PID unit. I am going to buy the PTS digital manometer setup first, so, the harbor freight units will get me by for a while.. Or I could take the signal out of the harbor freight unit and run it to a big SCR or IGBT and just run all of them.

Even if I only get speed control on 4 motors, its still worlds better than cranking the daylights out of the valve to get depression... Only to have the motors heat up and go thermal on me by the time I have the depression set because it takes too long to nail the depression.

Will save me an infinite amount of time.

I have run into a few ppl who do headporting or at least pretend to locally and not only can they not really speak to their porting methodology, but I have to say I haven't been treated so badly in quite some time without at least farting or spilling a beer, and, after getting a very bad attitude from most of them (Just get an LSx was heard more than once), I decided to take their business. Obviously they don't want to do it. They want to sell LSx swaps.. They can do that. I will do this. After talking to a few ppl about starting up here who had similar experiences (some very bad, where they ported through the water jacket, didn't weld it, and the head cracked) , I already have a few customers lined up.

So, I expect that my new investment in my bench and my porting booth will pay for itself in no time and I can pretty much expect to be swamped. And make enough to pay for the PID setup.

Here is what you could do with what you have. Put the speed control on just 4 motors. One on each motor. Then just buy rocker switches for the other 4. At low lifts use the speed controlled motors. If you need more turn the speed down on a couple of motors and hit the rocker switch for one motor to go full speed then work up again with the speed controlled motors. I did this on the first bench I built and it was ok just slower to do a test run.

John

Well, I had NO speed control before which made for alot of manometers being sucked up, alot of motors working harder than they should, and it taking a LOT of lost time messing with getting the depression nailed down....,

So as it turns out, I have 9 motors mounted, and actually 12 altogether if I want to build another intermediate bulkhead.But I think 9 motors should be PLENTY.

With that being said, these speed controls seem to do fine with 2 motors, and it does work with 3, although I don't know if it could handle having to fight to make 28" of pressure on 3 motors... .

I shall see... I am going to put it back together with the speed controllers on 2 motors each, and one with 3 and see how it goes. I already tested them blocked 2 per bank, then 3, then, let them run on speed control cranked all the way up to see what I would get.. each bank, including the bank of 3, all ran just fine for 15 mins! Color me surprised.. With a totally blocked airpath too!?! Hrm..

Although I tried to run all 9 motors on just ONE speed control, and, it actually did it for about 5 seconds and popped the fuse in the controller. Just wanted to see where the failure point is..

I may be able to run 4 motors however I don't think the controllers would fair so well once they are made to work under load.

All in all a very interesting day today.... Can't wait to get my digital pts manometer!.

Personally, I would go with one solid state motor control unit to control all the motors. If money is the issue I would still go this route first and then add the digital manometer later.

The motors are the heart of your flowbench, spend the money getting them right and you will have a good flowbench that is really usable and you are not messing with all the time.

You do not need the PID control (it's a nice feature) it can not be added to your individual controls as it needs the PTS SSR setup to work. So the money you spend on the single controls and check valves would be lost money at some point if and when you need to upgrade again. The PID is an add-on for the SSR and only requires some DIP switch setting changes and two wires attached and the control pot disconnected from the SSR.

I'm not trying to sell parts just being realistic on an end goal . . . if you like to tinker with your flowbench and make upgrades then forget what I just said

Ya I don't mind so much tinkering now that I don't have a corporate job. I actually have time now. I won't use the check valves now that I have enough speed control for all the motors so 1 wont need them and I am rewiring such that switching to the PID / SSR setup will be trivial and I Can use the speed Controls for other things or sell them On ebay.Even as is this ugly bench is dead accurate and
repeatable. l overbuilt it to death. just needs to be cleaned up and automated.

That being said expect a big order;)