Sorry if this is the wrong category I couldn’t find a suitable one and didn’t want to end up in oblivion…!
I’m wanting to make a pneumatic transport system, and wondered if anyone had any thoughts on whether this would make a good blower/vacuum? I’d be wanting to electronically switch between blowing and vacuuming (somehow) and have one at each end, such that the sending station is blowing and the receiving station is vacuuming.
if there are people here who have experience with this kind of build I’d LOVE to hear from you because bizarrely I’m not finding any communities on the English web for this particular field…
It won’t change the direction of airflow to run it backwards, which means that it hardly matters that the AC motor doesn’t change direction of rotation when you hook up the wires in the opposite orientation…
Talk more about what you want to transport. It will matter for whether something like what you propose can be made to work.
What shape object? Cylindrical container or something else?
Inside diameter of pipe / outside diameter of object?
Length of transport system?
Weight of object
Horizontal-only transport or do you need vertical lift as well?
What experience do you have already with electronics?
Have you ever seen a vacuum cannon? They work astonishingly well. I’m not sure it’s quite the right thing, as it’s unidirectional. But the one I built lasted through a couple of dozen shots so far with no damage to the flapper mechanism.
Just wondering apropos this thread whether the motor really wouldn’t be reversible? I am confused as I had understood that the airflow could be reversed if the motor was spun the other way. Very happy to be enlightened and learn something!!
Since the context of your post was this thread, I moved the post into the thread…
I think you were referring to my saying:
That part might not have been true; it depends on the shape of the vanes and the plenum around them. The ones with bags to vacuum and chop leaves generally use centrifugal fans which as far as I know are far more efficient moving air from the inside to the outside. There are units that are only leaf blowers with no vacuum/chop function that use radial fans which are approximately equivalent in each direction. But radial fans are optimized for velocity; we had a recent conversation about this when it comes to ventilating laser cutter cabinets. Worth reading through this:
It always draws air in through the large tube; that lever positions a valve (or diverter) to either send air out through the smaller tube beneath or into the leaf collection bag.
