A Simple little thing..

We are running the main tank pressure on the vehicle at very close to the absolute minimum spcified by the FAA experimental vehicle strucural guidlines. Our design pressure has a safety factor of two, but our test pressure has a SF of 1.25.

What does this mean? It means that no human should be within the blast radius while it is presurized. This implies a remote actuated quick disconnect.

A simple thing in concept a whole afternoon in acutality. The Quick disconnect needs to be reliable, and rugged. Each time its actuated its going to fall from several feet into the dirt or onto concrete.

Here is the result:

Two Aluminum arms are hose clamped to the barrel of a normal penumatic quick discconnect. These arms are fastend to the nut at the front end of an aircylinder (Mcmaster carr 6498K171) The plunger of the air cylinder threads into the back side of a brass plug that has been taped to match the aircylinder rod end thread. The brass plug pushes on the brass Tee and the aluminum arms pull the QD free. It works really well and is almost insdstructable.

 Here is the totally bogus video tour.