Ball Valves

There are many different kinds of ball valves used in industry that can have different configurations (eg. 2 way, 3 way etc), body materials (eg. stainless steel, brass etc) and actuation options (eg. manual handle, gear box, pneumatic, electric, hydraulic etc). In its simplest form and its most common it is a 2 way ball valve with a manual lever operation. From here it can have many different options and configurations, too many to discuss. The one thing that they all have in common and what makes it a ball valve is that the control or isolation part of the valve utilizes a ball that sits in a cavity of the valve. This can again be different depending upon the valve (eg. floating ball, trunnion mounted etc). Any valve that utlises this ball as its method of operation can be considered a ball valve.

 

This depends upon the type of ball valve in question as they all have different characteristics that define its operation. One thing that they all share in common is a ball rotating around its central axis which will block off or open ports. The most common is a 90 degree turn which will either open or isolate a port in a two way or switch ports on a three way. The valve is turned by an actuation which can either be manually by a handle or gearbox, pneumatically by a spring return or double acting actuator or electrically by an electric motor with a gear box (there are other set ups such as hydraulic but are not as common).

 

This depends upon the design of your valve, its usage case, its environment, media and how many times it is cycled. For instance if it is on a clean media, in a clean environment and not cycled regularly the life will be decades. If it is on a corrosive media and in a dry application with a high cycle rate the life will be much shorter. On our 90 degree turn ball valves we conduct regular lab testing and 30,000 cycles is a reasonable life cycle depending upon the application.

 

This really depends upon the design and type of your ball valve. If it is a two way bi directional ball valve (the vast majority of ball valves are this design) it is relatively straight forward as you just need to connect both ends (it can take flow in either direction). This can be with threaded, flanged, tri clover or any other end connection that the valve is built too.

 

This really depends upon the ball valve in question as they have an enormous range of domestic and industrial applications. Ball valves began to appear in industry post world war 2 where industrial machining tolerances and materials began to expand. Part of the advantage of a ball valve is that it is simple to operate and is very common with PTFE seats so it spans a very large range of media and applications that it can be used for. They can be found anywhere from domestic water operations to industrial steam and chemical applications. They do become less common as the size of the valve increases as it becomes more economical to move to a different valve type in larger sizes.

 

This depends upon where you are based and the freight method chosen. If the express freight option is selected it is usually next day delivery to metropolitan areas in Australia for under 5kg. If free freight has been selected it will go by road freight which can be anywhere from 1 to 10 days depending upon your location. It usually averages 3 days.

 

All of our products come standard with a 12 month warranty. The good news is we have very strict quality controls and all valves leave our warehouse tested (full material and testing certificates to API598 are available) and inspected so there are rarely any issues. Also once your valve is in and operating it will most likely continue to do so for a very long time.