Ball Valves won't close!!

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fbones
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Ball Valves won't close!!

Post by fbones »

Just as the title says. As soon as I turn my system on, my valves all open. The company that I purchased them from (TF valves) insist that these are NC valves. The problem obviously is that with all the valves open, as soon as one of my fermenters tells the glycol system to kick on, all of the tanks will be cooled at the time, completely undoing the whole reason for building my system.. If anyone has any ideas, please help!!!
JonW
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Re: Ball Valves won't close!!

Post by JonW »

What relay board are you using to control the ball valves? This is most likely your problem.

There are several boards out there (on ebay and other places) that will activate the relay when the input trigger is pulled to 5V OR ground. They don't activate when the input is left open (disconnected). To test this, remove the 5V trigger that is wired from the BCS and the valve should close. Now, use a jumper from the 5V output of the BCS to the relay input and the valve should open. Disconnect that 5V jumper and then try this again with a jumper from the BCS ground to the relay input and the valve will likely open again.

Please provide pics of the board and the valves and how things are wired. If it is a board issue, I may be able to tell you how to modify the board to get it to work they way you need. This is something I just did on a cheap 4 port relay board from ebay.
fbones
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Re: Ball Valves won't close!!

Post by fbones »

I am using an Open Source Control Concepts 8-Channel Driver Board.
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Re: Ball Valves won't close!!

Post by fbones »

JonW wrote:What relay board are you using to control the ball valves? This is most likely your problem.

There are several boards out there (on ebay and other places) that will activate the relay when the input trigger is pulled to 5V OR ground. They don't activate when the input is left open (disconnected). To test this, remove the 5V trigger that is wired from the BCS and the valve should close. Now, use a jumper from the 5V output of the BCS to the relay input and the valve should open. Disconnect that 5V jumper and then try this again with a jumper from the BCS ground to the relay input and the valve will likely open again.

Please provide pics of the board and the valves and how things are wired. If it is a board issue, I may be able to tell you how to modify the board to get it to work they way you need. This is something I just did on a cheap 4 port relay board from ebay.
This is a pic of the board:
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oakbarn
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Re: Ball Valves won't close!!

Post by oakbarn »

No pix attached
JonW
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Re: Ball Valves won't close!!

Post by JonW »

fbones wrote: This is a pic of the board:
Must be a pretty small pic as I can't see it! ;)
fbones
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Re: Ball Valves won't close!!

Post by fbones »

haha....oops. In my defense, it was 5am and I had been up since 9am lol. sorry about that guys. Here is the actual picture
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fbones
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Re: Ball Valves won't close!!

Post by fbones »

As you can see in the photo (finally), the wires running into the "Inputs" are coming from the bcs outputs, and the driver board "Outputs" are running to the ball valves. Is this where I screwed up?
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Re: Ball Valves won't close!!

Post by JonW »

Can you do the test I suggested to test the behavior of the board?
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Re: Ball Valves won't close!!

Post by fbones »

JonW wrote:Can you do the test I suggested to test the behavior of the board?
When you say to remove the 5v trigger... I don't have anything wired to this. Is this the problem? Should I have something wired in here?
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