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Solenoid valve control

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Uncle3MTA3

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hi,
i'm looking to control a double solenoid directional control valve the will reciprocate a cylinder on a mobile robot. i've tried to build a circuit to do this off of 27vdc using national instruments multisim program, but it keeps crashing after just on cycle or less. the solenoids will be 24vdc, but i'm not positive about the wattage, i saw one that had 3.5watt, but i have not decieded if i will us it or not.
i am thinking of using transistors as switches that are controlled by a limit switch.
any advice (or better yet, schematics) that you could give me would be great.
thanks in advance
 
Hi,

before you go deeper into any details you should know what kind of solenoid valve you are going to use.

There are 5/3 valves being manufactured for all kinds of voltages.

If you want to activate a piston both ways you need a valve opening one port to pressurize one side of the piston and open a bleed line for the opposite side of the cylinder. This is done energizing the coil. It reverses function with a deenergized coil.

All you have to do is switching power to the coil and interrrupt it on demand.

Were you talking about hydraulic or pneumatic solenoid valves?

Boncuk
 
it's a pneumatic system.
i have the design of the pneumatic circuit pretty well worked out, it's just the electronic switching circuit that is causing me problems. once i have an idea of how to build that, then i can find a cheap valve to use and work out the details based on it's stats.
 
ok, to be a little more clear on my attempts, i have tried to virtually build the following circuit based on the solenoid needing 24vdc and 3.5watts.
**broken link removed**
in this circuit, i used the tip32a as the transistor and the 1n4001 as the diode. with these components, i determined that i need r1=2.2kohm and r2=22kohm.
when i make this in multisim, i get a simulation error that the program can fix on it's own.
i hope that this makes clear what my attempts have been and where my mistake may be.
 
Using Multisim?

Here is your circuit and another. Why do you want to use a high-side driver when the input of a low side driver can be referenced to ground, and be driven with a smaller input voltage?
 

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yeah, i'm using multisim to find a circuit that will work before i start soldering stuff together hoping for the best and frying components in the process of finding a working circuit.
i have no preference as to whether i use a high or a low side driver (i had to look up what those terms even ment). the schematic i posted was just the only circuit i found that claimed to do what i wanted without buying a tonne of stuff (i'm a student, so my budget is very limited).
i take it you would recommend my going to a low side driver instead? why would that require a smaller input voltage?
 
...
i take it you would recommend my going to a low side driver instead? why would that require a smaller input voltage?

Look at my LTSpice sim. Note that the low-side driver is being driven with an active-high 5V signal (like a PIC port). The high-side driver requires an active-low signal that starts at 24V and goes downward from there.
 
thank you so much, i built your circuit and it works perfectly. i can get almost .5A going through the solenoid.
however, now i have a small new concern. should i be worried about have the solenoid on without PWM? i expect that it will be on constantly for 1 second at most and be off for the smae amount of time.
 
ok, based on the suggestions i've been given here (thank you again), here is the circuit i am thinking of building.
**broken link removed**
the display on the far left is the ammeter by the solenoid. the display on top it the voltmeter for the 3.3kohm resistor and the display under that is for the 47ohm resistor.
i wanted a single power source and the switch will be a limit switch for the cylinder.
any thing i have wrong here? or any suggestions to make it better?
 
Last edited:
thank you so much, i built your circuit and it works perfectly. i can get almost .5A going through the solenoid.
however, now i have a small new concern. should i be worried about have the solenoid on without PWM? i expect that it will be on constantly for 1 second at most and be off for the smae amount of time.

Why would you want to PWM a solenoid valve? :confused::confused:

That thing has to fully open and fully close.

Switching on and off at 1 second intervals won't do anything to the coil. :)

Boncuk
 
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