Valve actuator retrofit

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I've actually been looking into doing this recently with this valve, and there are none specifically for that valve. You can find actuators, but they're typically for industrial applications, and while I haven't priced them I get the feeling that they're expensive (http://www.clarksol.com/html/prodspecsRE_Act.cfm). You have three concerns putting an actuator on a valve like this:

-Physical placement - How does it attach? Can you make something to adapt it? (this is the easiest task, IMO)
-Torque - How much torque does it take to turn that valve? Is the actuator powerful enough?
-Control - The majority of valve actuators are 2-state, open and closed. This valve has multiple states so you need the electronics to switch to each each one, and potentially in the correct direction.

Ebay on occasion has some actuators without valves, you just have to check regularly and unfortunately most of the time there isn't much information about them.

Right now my plan is to build my system using these valves. Once everything is in place and I can manually brew with it I'm going to look into building my own actuator for this valve, but that's probably a couple months off.

Also I came across this in my search...it's not really an answer but it's a start...
http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,16479.0.html
 
Yeah, I'm sort of in the same boat. The only thing I found that might have worked, which I can't find again right now, listed a time of 90s to open or close. That's WAY too long for this valve. I don't particularly mind the actuator being only two states since I generally use the valve as an L-type and don't really use the T-type functions, however that means my two states are 180* apart instead of typical 90* for most ball valves.
 
Yep, I noticed the long open times as well for a good number of them also. If you find something, let me know and I'll do the same.
 
Back
Top