c02 manual regulator problem

hi guys,

bought a c02 set from NA recently and whenever i turn my bubble counter to 1bps(painstakingly), after awhile maybe 2hrs loater the bubble stop, no more bubbles coming out. why is this so? i went to bioplast, the uncle there said manual regulator is lidat, must get german brand then it wun happen.

not sure whether u guys enocounter this prob. any other solutions to this? thanks alot!

[Anthen]

Originally Posted by marle

hi guys,

bought a c02 set from NA recently and whenever i turn my bubble counter to 1bps(painstakingly), after awhile maybe 2hrs loater the bubble stop, no more bubbles coming out. why is this so? i went to bioplast, the uncle there said manual regulator is lidat, must get german brand then it wun happen.

not sure whether u guys enocounter this prob. any other solutions to this? thanks alot!

Some of the manual regulators after a while will slowly either inceased or decreased the bubbles.. if u wishes to have consistent bubbles, u might want to invest in solenoid.. in the past, i'm using solenoid and i accidentally drop it and the solenoid spolit so i took out the solenoid and use as a manual regulator.. although i using manual regulator, is still working fine and very consistent.. maybe the spring in the tuning is loose??

same here, very frustrating as i use it on my calcium reactor! went down to petmart and bought another manual one, problem solved.

Originally Posted by marle

hi guys,

bought a c02 set from NA recently and whenever i turn my bubble counter to 1bps(painstakingly), after awhile maybe 2hrs loater the bubble stop, no more bubbles coming out. why is this so? i went to bioplast, the uncle there said manual regulator is lidat, must get german brand then it wun happen.

not sure whether u guys enocounter this prob. any other solutions to this? thanks alot!

Hi, maybe I can help to explain what going on. As you may know how a valve works. by turning the knob, you are altering the opening gap that control how much air or liquid allow to pass through. And in order to seal the valve, there should be a rubber on the valve that make a perfect seal against leakage.

Heres' the problem. The rubber will flex a bit when it move as there is frictional force. So you may have adjusted the setting to your liking, but hours later the setting change. This could probably be the rubber will tend to move back to it shape after some time, remember the frictional force that prevent it earlier. Hope it not too technical.

So maybe the expensive valve is better design to prevent adjustment slippage.

Originally Posted by triggerfish

same here, very frustrating as i use it on my calcium reactor! went down to petmart and bought another manual one, problem solved.

bro, may i know which brand u bought?

IMO, the main reason for the inconsistency of the output is the lack of a step-down regulator.

If you have noticed, many a times, solenoid regulators have 2 guages rather than 1 on manual regulators. 1 is for the output pressure from the main valve, which usually reads at 1100 PSI, the other is the operating pressure that the solenoid is operating with, usually no more than 20 PSI.

At high such high pressure, it would be hard to produce a consistent output even with a needle valve.

In many solenoid regulators, the pressure from the main valve is usually stepped down as it would not be cheap to install a solenoid that is able to handle such high pressure. Therefore, its usually easier to produce a consistent output from a solenoid regulator.

If I remember correctly, Mr Chan from NA does have manual regulators that stepped down the operating pressure. However, the price would be almost that of a solenoid regulator. You can try asking Mr Chan, and probably you can learn much more from him.

Hope this helps!