Humphrey Develops Custom Valve Manifold Assembly for High Performance
Humphrey Products company has developed a custom valve manifold assembly with virtually zero leakage for a customer who designs and manufactures high performance pressure and vacuum decay leak testing instruments used in production applications. The units are designed to detect pressure changes to 0.00001 PSI, then calculate the leak rate. Selected manifold assemblies were subjected to 200,000 cycles, and every 50,000 cycles the customer ran a precision leak test. On every test the pressure drop due to leaks was less than 0.002 PSI over 30 seconds at 100psi - the equivalent of a 0.0025 scc/min flow rate. This exceeded the customer's specification by a factor of twenty.
The Humphrey Engineered Solutions team worked with the customer's engineers to develop the custom manifold to meet exacting requirements. Humphrey engineers redesigned their cartridge insert valve and developed a new stem to hold the O-ring. The stem effectively "trapped" the O-ring, keeping it from being blown out or distorted under the high pressures encountered during the testing unit's operation. Then the Engineered Solutions team utilized the proven Humphrey Mizer valve as a pilot operator. The Mizer's low current consumption meant low heat dissipation, ensuring that it would not affect the accuracy of the customer's instrumentation.
