Ski Builders Forum

I'm thinking about using our huge air bladder (12" dia) to either move the bottom mold up, or the top mold down, into position, and then another smaller one (8-10" maybe) between top mold and cat track. I want to do this so that I can have a nice big opening when the press is at rest, so that loading/unloading is easier and things squeeze down better.

My question is this. Lets say I inflate the small one to like 20 lbs. Then I start up the big one and the whole thing moves into position, will the pressures in the two airbags equalize? They will not be connected.
What I mean is, will the 20psi hose get squished and go up to 60 if I put say 80psi into the one that pushes everything down?

Or think of it like this: If all I had was the one for the cat track, and I inflated it to 20psi, then all of a sudden there was this huge down force on the top of the system (top air bag inflates), would it increase the pressure inside the 20psi airbag? I should know this, some engineer I turned out to be, hahaha.

I would have to believe so. Since the bag at 80psi will compress the bag at 20psi, reducing the volume (flattening it) and increasing the pressure until the forces equalize.

i think that it would increase the pressure in the smaller bags,
i would run pressure gauges on each bag to keep an eye on everything, and make sure nothing blows up.

i cant see the pressure between the bags equalizing if they are not connected, it wouldn't be very hard to run a hose to connect them tho, and you could put a valve on it aswell.