The Banderlog Water Injection Valves
Just in case you were wondering how these things were
built.. Here's a sneak peek into the factory while building some
Water Injection Valves.
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First step is building the plumbing assemblies. Teflon tape, pipe cutters, fittings and stuff. Its a little like a 3-D puzzle. Notice the wrenches.. Annoying thing about this design. It actually takes ALL these wrenches to assemble the plumbing. Every piece ended up needing a different size wrench.
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Once all the plumbing assemblies are done, its time to move over to the molding bench. Casting is started by loosely screwing the contact pins into the valve mold. These will be what the wires will connect to in the finished product. |
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Pins are in. Off to the right is a complete plumbing assembly. This will be buried in the plastic case when the molding is finished. The filter is used to set alignment of the plumbing assembly in the mold. |
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The plumbing and contact pins are aligned and ready to have the electronics attached. Although its not shown here, the PC board fits on top of this. The contact pins and connections to the solenoid valve pass through the PC board and are soldered in place at this point. For this product, I'm having the PC boards made to order. It turned out a lot cheaper to buy them finished than make them myself. Less trouble too. |
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Once everything is soldered together, the assembly is removed from the mold and tested. This is the last chance to fix anything before its cast into plastic for, well kinda'.. Forever. |
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The small screws are holding the connection pins into place. The PC board is soldered to the pins and the plumbing holding everything in alignment. The base plate is now clamped to the back of the mold. Ready to pour.. This is the scary bit. Double check everything. This is because any mistakes now can ruin the entire assembly. |
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The plastic has been poured and cooked off. The resin we're using takes 90 minutes in an 120 degree oven to set. Time to pull everything apart and see how it turned out. Moment of truth (Gulp!) |
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Success! The finished module. The mold gets cleaned up and reassembled. Its ready for another casting. There is a little cleanup of the the freshly cast module . Then it goes on for final test. Just to make sure that everything survived the casting process. |
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Final test complete. Now its time for stickers, wiring, rubber bits.. All the last fiddlybits are added during final assembly. |
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Manuals, small part kits, boxes and some packaging. We're ready to ship! That's about it. We hope you enjoyed the factory tour! |
