Blast Gates

[BloomingtonMike]

I use those PVC $6 ball valves on my vac hold down manifold setup on my CNC for vac clamping of work pieces.  Opening the valve is not a smooth easy motion like the brass ball valves many are used too. I am not sure a handle would work will with them.

[Stytooner]

I use those PVC $6 ball valves on my vac hold down manifold setup on my CNC for vac clamping of work pieces.  Opening the valve is not a smooth easy motion like the brass ball valves many are used too. I am not sure a handle would work will with them.

Yeah, they always seem to have some stiction. I have used them for water supply, but they are not great in an emergency. I have snapped off the knobs (wings actually) before on some older ones. The smallest ones aren't too bad, but 2" is getting into larger ones. They will stick on you. Especially so with some wood resins added into it.
The clearances on typical wood working blast gates are no where near as tight. You have to wonder why.

[AgGEM]

Yeah, they always seem to have some stiction. I have used them for water supply, but they are not great in an emergency. I have snapped off the knobs (wings actually) before on some older ones. The smallest ones aren't too bad, but 2" is getting into larger ones. They will stick on you. Especially so with some wood resins added into it.
The clearances on typical wood working blast gates are no where near as tight. You have to wonder why.

Sage, Lee and Mike.
TY
Ag

[Pirate]

I bought this kit from Rockler when I put together a shop vac/dust collector. Mounted 3 blast gates, and 2, y's on a 4' board, and mounted board on wall behind oss sander and ras. 3rd port has a hose for cleanup.
Worth it considering all the parts, and clamps.

http://www.rockler.com/2-1-2-dust-collec...tarter-kit

[Steve N]

The only problem with the gates is for each one made if you Google it hard, you will see a lot of stories of air leakage with every type I've seen. Now if you have excessive DC specs for the size job you are trying to do, you can get by with each instance of a gate leaking a bit. If you are close to the correct amount of DC for the job at hand, and have 6 gates, you may find they leak too much. Some of the metal ones allow you to make modifications to shut down the leakage. I've not seen that about any of the plastic ones. With the ball valve, you know it's either open, or closed. They make smaller ball valves with a PVC liner to do a glue joining, I wonder of their aren't brass valves that big that also have a PVC lining at the joint. Brass over PVC will alleviate the cheap, hard to turn, breaks a lot stuff. You could easily put a strong rod down, and into the handle of a brass fitting, and open and close a brass one fairly easy, provided you had the valve attached exactly in the optimal position. But that position thing would also apply just as heavily to a gate, some of the ones I have seen used were difficult to open and close by grabbing the lift notch. Just an example of cheap, mass run production. You don't get Ferrari's