Hello and welcome to Blastone Internationals tutorial on this particular piece of equipment, which is called an air prep.
An air prep is, basically, an aftercooler.
What enough to cool it us is cools the air as it comes from the compressor into this particular receiver or pressure vessel.
So, an air prep is designed to have an inlet or an accumulation bowl on it.
What the accumulation bowl does is it receives the primary air. Any air that’s got any moisture in it is vented through this particular valve here and as you can see, the water dripping out of it.
So, ultimately, when you start using this machine, the first thing that you do is you’ll leave one of these valves. This valve here cracked open slightly, not excessively, because if you open it all the way up, of course you’re losing too much air that the compressor’s making unnecessarily.
So, you’ve got an accumulator here, the air comes in. So, how do we get the air into this thing?
Well, primarily there is what we call a bull hose. So, the bull hose comes from the compressor. So, the best way to do this and to keep yourself safe is to hook this on to the unit first before you hook it on to the compressor.
So, there’s no chance of anybody actuated air through this particular hose because as you can see it is quite substantial rule of thumb is with these particular hoses.
If you can depress it with your foot or crimp it with your hands, there’s no air in it. So, if the ends open, of course, it can’t have any accumulated air in a difficult at all.
What I prefer to say on these particular hoses are a double bolt clamp. So, 1-2 bolts the keepers are on the top. It’s got a shoulder on the ferrule, and that pushes down inside the hose tile, goes right inside this particular hose. We also use silicon or Sikaflex to help assist and hold that particular hose in that hose tile.
Also, you’ll notice in the front of this particular mince up coupling, so this is called a two-inch mince up coupling. In this, here is a seal or a gasket.