kips are tried and true & waterproof. clips are new, cheap, and will require waterproofing. I think thats all we really know at this point.
The clippards dont require waterproofing. They are just as waterproof as the kips. The biggest down side of the clippards is that if your battery voltage gets low(~5v) they wont function (they are rated for 12v not 6V but run fine on 6v under normal conditions) Upside to the clippards is that they are cheaper and you can order one or two at a time. the Kips are over twice as much $$ and there is a min order of like 25 or something so you have to wait till there is a group order.
Clippard solenoid valves can be ordered for 6V. I've got them in multiple ships & run nothing but 6V. Never had a problem with them in several years. If you've got a 12V system that drops down to around 5V, firing guns is the least of your problems. JM
The Clippard mouse series valves come in 6v. The Clippard Maximatic series solenoid valves do not come in 6v ... 12v only. In my review, I mentioned that I had voltage drop problems in my light cruiser. That cruiser used a 6v nickel metal battery pack made from cells that only had a 3C discharge rate. The ship has a high performance pump motor and two speed 400 drive motors. Under full load with everything on, the battery pack voltage seemed to occasionally drop below 6v (probably during start and stopping when amp draw was at it's highest) which resulted in the Clippard Maximatics sometimes not firing. The problem was solved by going to a 7.2v pack. I also mentioned that I had no problems running the Clippard Maximatics on my Richeliu's 6v system because the 6v/36ah battery had more than enough capacity and discharge rate to hold 6v under full load.
One other pro for the Maximatic valves: they only weigh 4.2 ounces. I haven't weighed the KIPs because I don't have any, but the KIPs feel heavier. Maybe someone can weigh a KIP solenoid and post it here? I've also heard that the KIPs will flow more air. Again, I don't know because I don't have a KIP and I haven't been able to find a flow rate for them online. Does anyone know?
Kips will fight you to give out that information for some dumb reason. After asking for manager after manager, I finally got "somewhere around 28-30scfm @ 150psi".
After reading the posts and doing some research this is what I have found. The Clippard Mouse valves only handle up to 105psi, and 0.6 scfm @ 105psi. Now I see that JohnmCA72 has had no problems with these. At what psi are you using? I plan on using 150psi for my cannons and I don’t know if these will work. Now you can get a Booster for these valves to increase the scfm to 6.1 at a cost of $16.50. Between the valve and booster your spending $38.25.
Brown, the Maximatics are not the little mouse valves... The Maximatics are rated for 180psi Here's a link to the two-way one I looked at: http://www.clippard.com/store/display_details.asp?sku=MME-2PDS-W012
I have a system with this and the solenoids are used as triggers for PAV valves. The Pav valves have 3 ports, one port in for 100psi for the trigger, one port in for the 150psi that connects to your air source, and on port out for the 150psi which connects to the cannon. The weight of the PAV3 and the solenoid is not that far from the Kip. I am not sure exaclty but the Pav3 is not very light.
There's a lot of different valves in Clippards lineup. But they've been around for years, and have been in use for years in various combat ships. Maybe it's predominantly in Big Gun, but I know there's some in IRCWCC as well. The Mouse valves have the most usage that I'm aware of, but are kinda heavy. I use the "Compact ES" (ES3B6's) tied onto a manifold. Much lighter than the Mouse, but both are fairly reliable. I will give a caveat for the 3 way valves we use in Big Gun - they do need test fired after a deep sink to get any moisture out. That might apply to all the valves regardless, but I've only got experience with the 3 way's. In Big Gun though we're not concerned for flow rate on them though as they're just tied to MPA actuators. Clippard's online catalog is kinda hard to follow sometimes. (who am I kidding, it's definitely hard to use if you don't already know EXACTLY what you want) Below are the links to the PDF portions of the catalog for your enjoyment. All of Clippards Electronic valves: http://www.clippard.com/downloads/general/PDF_Documents/NEW%202008%20Catalog/Catalog%20by%20Section/178-238%20Electronic%20Valves.pdf Compact ES valves: http://www.clippard.com/downloads/general/PDF_Documents/NEW%202008%20Catalog/Catalog%20By%20Page%20Number/178-238%20Electronic%20Valves/Page%20220.pdf http://www.clippard.com/downloads/general/PDF_Documents/NEW%202008%20Catalog/Catalog%20By%20Page%20Number/178-238%20Electronic%20Valves/Page%20221.pdf http://www.clippard.com/downloads/general/PDF_Documents/NEW%202008%20Catalog/Catalog%20By%20Page%20Number/178-238%20Electronic%20Valves/Page%20222.pdf Manifolds for the Compact ES valves: http://www.clippard.com/downloads/general/PDF_Documents/NEW%202008%20Catalog/Catalog%20By%20Page%20Number/178-238%20Electronic%20Valves/Page%20223.pdf http://www.clippard.com/downloads/general/PDF_Documents/NEW%202008%20Catalog/Catalog%20By%20Page%20Number/178-238%20Electronic%20Valves/Page%20224.pdf Cheers Jeff
Tugboat, Sorry I forgot to add that I am running on 6V 12Ah batt. And the 12v may not work from what I have read.
The 12V valves work fine on 6V as long as you have enough battery capacity that the batteries aren't getting weak towards the end of the battle. At one local battle I was at one of the guys was using them in a SoDak and he had been out running it around the day before and neglected to charge the batteries overnight. Towards the end of the battle the guns would shood fine if he wasnt running his motors or pump but if he was that would drop the voltage enough that the solenoids wouldn't function. After the battle we messed with it some while having a voltmeter hooked up to it, it appears that somewhere around 5.5V is the lower limit to fire those 12V valves (fully charged 6V SLAs are around 6.7V).
One additional advantage of the Clippards is the seperate manifolds. In 10 seconds and two screws, they lift off for cleaning/swapping leaving the tubing in the ship (the hardest part of KIP service is not the KIP, but cutting off the tubing, or else having it fight you as you try to twist-unscrew it).
That was actually three days of running around without charging batteries....my bad. I saw someone made up a nimh pack out of aaa batteries and was using them to fire the solenoids. I figure you could put a few batteries in series to keep the voltage up also if thats an issue. I have to say I haven't lost guns since. Rob A.
