How to Choose Pneumatic Fittings and Thread Types

In Europe you generally run into PT thread, BSPT thread, or metric thread sizes.  In the US we predominately use NPT thread.  Now a lot of my customers get random machines that are going to have fittings that they have no idea what they are doing, what sizes they have, what pitch they have, ect.

Now one way to combat this is actually the SMC unifit fitting.  What makes it special is that it has a conical rubber seal on the threaded side.  Now the Pneumatic hose threads you don’t have to worry about.  They are general sizes that are going to fit general, metric, BSPT, or PT thread types.  So all it does is screws on, it is not going to screw on overly tight and then with an easy Vacuum circuit breaker quarter turn of the wrench its actually going to seal and seat that conical seal onto your surface.  Now why does that make life easier?  You won’t have to have 150 different types of fittings to control one line, to replace everything in your plant.  That’s confusing, wastes time, wastes money because you are going to have excess inventory because you can’t generally buy one at a time.  In general it is just going to make life a lot easier.