Air Hose Reel Types
To protect your air hoses as well as the men and women who work with them, it is often necessary to install air hose reels. With these, the hoses are easily returned to their storage spaces after each use. This keeps them from lying on the floor, unnecessarily exposed to dust, grime, and the possibility of damage. It is also kept out of the way of the workers. Even for home use, an air hose reel keeps your work area neat and uncluttered.
Although there are different kinds of air hoses, there is no neat way of classifying them. Often they are sorted based on the winding mechanism, the material out of which they are made, and their mounting.
Air hose reels either have a manual hand-crank mechanism to retract the hose or an auto-rewind system. The latter can consist of a small electric, hydraulic, or pneumatic motor. Others use a spring-loaded mechanism. Motorized systems are usually seen in large industrial or construction settings where hoses can run a few hundreds of feet. For do-it-yourselfers, though, the manual and spring-loaded types are more common.
Materials used in manufacturing air hose reels include painted or powder coated all-welded steel, stainless steel, high-impact plastic, UV-stabilized polypropylene, or wood. Some of these reels are designed to fully enclose the wound material leaving only a small aperture though which it can be extracted. There are also those called live connection reels, which, when connected to an air compressor, allows the flow of fluid even when the hose is not fully unwound.
Some reels are portable while others are mounted either on the wall, ceiling, floor, or workbench. The portable types are either fitted with a handle and can be carried by hand, or installed on a cart with a reel cabinet, depending on the size or length of the hose. Carts often incorporate a tool storage cabinet. The mounted kinds typically have brackets or arms that are connected to ceiling joists or wall studs.