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Pneumatic Squeezer.

A

Atacamandy

Member
Lately my squeezer is becoming less efficient. The piston seems to work well and it sounds good, but it's not enough to squeeze the rivets sometime. I thought it might be poor alignment of the piston, but that seems fine. I put the piston in my drill press and it's seems very straight. Air pressure is fine and the trigger activates fully.

Any thoughts on what might be wrong?

Andy
 
Hi Andy,
When was the last time you bled the squeezer? Their performance can suffer if too much air gets built up.
 
It depends.......

Are the rivets you having problems with -6 or -7s? Some squeezers have problems with these and you'll have to squeeze twice with two different piston lengths. Squeezers need the pistion to travel a minimum distance in order to squeeze a rivet. Sometimes on the longer rivets, it's difficult to get the required travel unless you do it in two steps.

I highly recommend giving Bob Avery a call, even if you didn't buy your squeezer from him. He will service squeezers from many vendors. He most likely will assist with troubleshooting over the phone before asking you to send it in. The last time I sent mine in (I dropped it on the hangar floor and a few items were bent) he only charged me $30 for the repair.

Hopefully you don't have problems with customs on sending an unit in for repair from Ontario.

bob
 
Atacamandy said:
Lately my squeezer is becoming less efficient. The piston seems to work well and it sounds good, but it's not enough to squeeze the rivets sometime. I thought it might be poor alignment of the piston, but that seems fine. I put the piston in my drill press and it's seems very straight. Air pressure is fine and the trigger activates fully.

Any thoughts on what might be wrong?

Andy
Click to expand...

Andy,
I had the same problem, but it's simple to fix. The stroke needs to be adjusted. The real force is in the end, so shorten it a little.
John
 
back off

Yes, you need to back off the setting. In other words set the plunger as if you want to squeeze the rivet LESS. Totally counter-intuitive but true. The more you close the plunger gap in order to squeeze the rivet more, the less squeeze you'll actually get. Research how the squeezer works and you'll see why.

To summarise: As you close the gap the more squeeze you get UP TO A POINT where closing further gives less squeeze.

Also happened to me and I also thought there was something wrong with my squeezer!
 
Anton Lawrenz said:
Yes, you need to back off the setting. In other words set the plunger as if you want to squeeze the rivet LESS. Totally counter-intuitive but true. The more you close the plunger gap in order to squeeze the rivet more, the less squeeze you'll actually get. Research how the squeezer works and you'll see why.

To summarise: As you close the gap the more squeeze you get UP TO A POINT where closing further gives less squeeze.

Also happened to me and I also thought there was something wrong with my squeezer!
Click to expand...


Thank-you everyone, what it turned out to be was a bent piston. I took it out and gave it a gentle grind on my grinder to nock down the bend as a temporary fix. Works now, but I did order a new piston from Cleavland.

Andy
 
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