Airline Fittings?

Do they require any form of lubrication or best kept dry? I ask because I unplugged my sand blaster from the compressor and I couldn’t plug anything else into the coupling. Luckily I had a spare coupling to swap over which works fine. Just wondering if I should take the old one apart if possible and lubricate it?

There are different types of fittings which are not interchangeable

And even if you buy the same type of fitting they do not always fit as well as the originals. My 45 year old connectors still seal completely whereas new ones bought recently were swapped out twice by supplier and still did not seal properly.

Colin

It would not harm to put a quick squirt of silicon spray in there. But not if the line is going to be used for any kind of painting, as silicon trashes paint. I have a lot of air tools & painting equipment so i do not do this. Over the years I have standardised on the PCL fitting which is a industry standard & I find the best ones to use. Some of the ones that come on the Aldi stuff, not sure what they are called can get very awkward to connect.

My personal choice is the Schrader, but the PCL fitting seems to be very popular.. There are also Euro type fittings, one of which is fitted to the outlet from the reservoir on on my compressor, needing a hose to connect it to the filter and pressure regulator, before my Schrader outlet connection..

As already said, the different types are on interchangeable, and so short lengths of hose carrying the different types of fitting need to be made up to allow one type to be coupled to a different type.

Fittings also come in different bore to suit low or high volume requirements (such 1/4BSP or 3/8 BSP to suit different bore airlines, and air requirements of the different size air tools. You would probably have problems supplying a 1" sq drive gun with a 1/4 bore hose and fittings to obtain maximum power! )

Howard

The old and new female couplings are identical. The old one seems to have a stuck sleeve which doesn’t pop out when the male fitting is inserted.

out of interest........

originally I used a Swedish make of a/line fittings.......but they died after 20 odd years of proffessional use.....

Now retrired but still v/busy bought some from liddil.......now 5 years old, still air tight and work fine.........

my compressor has a working press of 150psi.......

I’ve had a quick look at MachineMart where I most likely bought them and they are PCL fittings.

That's the same as I have. The only time I have trouble attaching is if the air pressure is high. I usually drop the pressure & they push in easy.

At the museum, we have the 1/4" PCL fittings, but for home I have the Euro fittings which were on the little home compressor and on all the pneumatic bits form Lidl. They should not require any lubrication. Grit from the op's blaster probably got into his fitting and ruined it.

Ah you could have a point there.

LiDL Euro fittings are good value and seem both reliable and effective. I'm slowly changing over from old style PCL to Euro fittings now I have rather more air tools and air needs. Almost enough PCL fittings came with the equipment so I only had to buy about 4.

Euro fittings are nominal 8 mm - 5/16" bore as opposed to the PCL bore of 1/4" - 6.5mm so should flow more air. Main restriction is the valve in the female couplings which is smaller than the nominal bore. Allegedly the effective valve passage size on Euro fittings is closer to the nominal bore than the equivalent parts on old style PCL so the potential flow disparity is even greater. Probably not that important with home shop size compressors unless running at lower pressures.

Clive

That is a possibility. The compressor is sorely for use with my sand blaster so the couplings never get disturbed (until the other day!) but it could still have got grit in it. I think it would be a good idea for me to find a way of sealing the coupling in case I want to plug a blow gun in again. All my stuff has PCL fittings as that was what garages used when I was a mechanic. Another quick look at my local supplier - MachineMart, shows they only sell PCL style fittings so that’s fine. I will buy a spare connector just in case. They do have a few XF high flow fittings but I don’t need those and they are more expensive anyway.

I have a mixture of PCL and euro fittings. All the fittings that I have (of both types) have BSP threads, so it's easy enough to adapt from one to another. I don't know if all euro fittings available have BSP threads.

Interesting point about BSP. I wonder if countries in the European Union will be using them after Brexit?

That was a joke by the way.

@#§¥%€ predictive text. I typed Solely in the above post and the puter has changed it to sorely for some reason.

Edited By Vic on 02/01/2020 12:37:22

I have split the output from my compressor into clean and oily lines. The clean line has a filter and dryer and everything that plugs into this uses Euro type fittings. The oily line has a filter and lubricator and uses PCL fittings.

That sir is a good idea you have there.