The Framers Forum

I have been using a Charnwood C325 pneumatic tab driver for about a year.

Problem is that it has started breaking tabs and jamming. This isn't an occasional issue it happens at least once on each frame assembly.

I have taken the end plate off and cleaned/lubricated it but the problem persists.

I was getting RSI with a manual driver so I dont want to go back to that.

Does anyone have any suggestions? There dont seem to be any adjustments possible.

I can't find any other pneumatic guns online but I'm sure other manufacturers must make them

It sounds like the firing pin edge is worn or nicked. Open up the top and take out the firing pin. Try turning it around and putting it back in and see if that helps. Otherwise order a new firing pin.

Or - take the firing pin into your local independent garage and ask them nicely to grind 1mm off it's length. That will give you a new sharp edge on the pin.

Some tab guns work better with some makes of tabs better than others. Some of the cheaper tabs just are too much trouble for the money you think you are saving. I have several well used manual guns and they all work better with the better brand tabs, maybe also with your gun.

Not your average framer wrote:Some tab guns work better with some makes of tabs better than others. Some of the cheaper tabs just are too much trouble for the money you think you are saving. I have several well used manual guns and they all work better with the better brand tabs, maybe also with your gun.

I use the same make of tab. I have previously had no problem. I suspect that the mechanism has worn with use and although It's not visible I think it's out of spec.

I have looked at alternatives but there is a mega price jump to better drivers

I used to have a Charnwood pneumatic tab gun and for a few years it worked perfectly. It started to developed an occasional misfire that became more and more frequent. For about £60 I thought I’d just buy another but Charnwood stopped selling them.

After a little thought I bought an Omer pneumatic gun and have never had an issue with it.

The old adages “You get what you pay for” and “Buy cheap buy twice” apply here (for me).

I just bought a pneumatic tab gun from Framers Corner and for £59.00 including vat its really very good- Fires flexi and rigid tabs
http://www.framerscorner.co.uk/shop/pro ... gun?cid=20

Does this tab gun fire the tabs, nice and tight to the back, or is it a little loose? Some of the cheap manual guns have a thicker bit of metal between the tab and the frame backing board, as I found to my cost with the T220 manual driver and ended up giving it away, because it was inferior to my existing gun. At the time, I needed a second tab gun for my part time framing assistant to use, as sharing the one gun was affecting productivity.

Thanks.

Framerpicture wrote:I just bought a pneumatic tab gun from Framers Corner and for £59.00 including vat its really very good- Fires flexi and rigid tabs
http://www.framerscorner.co.uk/shop/pro ... gun?cid=20

Thats the one I am having problems with

Alternatively here's another way of looking at it. Supposing you look at it as renting the gun for £59 for one year, at the end of the year you still don't own something you are renting, if you divide that £59 by 365 days in a year it comes out to slightly over 16 pence per day. Now lets say that on average, you are producing about four frames per day, then the cost of renting that gun is only 4 pence per frame.

O.K., these figures are just plucked out of the air, you decide how relavent you think they are, it's just an illustration. Lets say you are a busy volume based framer, well I don't think you will be in the market for one of these cheap guns, because you need something that's going to be used like crazy all day long.

We all will choose one option, or the other. Which works best for you?

OK thanks. I suppose I should 'come clean' and admit that although I said I had been using it for a year I actually bought it second hand off eBay.

It therefore may have had 5 years of use in addition to my 12 months

I will probably buy a new one as my turnover doesn't justify £x00's

Not your average framer wrote:Does this tab gun fire the tabs, nice and tight to the back, or is it a little loose?

We bought this to replace a Taurus (which was very old!) and the results are comparable

I have just typed in the little "search" box at the top right-hand corner of the Framers Forum home page, "Omer tab gun" that brings up some fascinating old posts on this very subject

Peter.

I ordered a new one from Framers Corner which has just arrived.

It's worse than my other one. Jams every time. Haven't successfully ejected a single tab yet.

Tried with Framers corner T4R and T4F tabs which are the recommended ones.

Very disappointed. Looks as if I will need to get a better one

Just wondering if you'd had time to try my idea first - ie take out the firing pin and turn it around. Or take it to a garage and get them to grind off the worn tip?

Thats the new better XF connection. I use them for all my air stuff. They are UK standard

https://www.screwfix.com/p/pcl-aa7102-x ... read/2015h

Well, I won't be changing over all my hoses and fittings. As a matter of interest, how well packaged was you gun when it arrived? I was really a bit surprised how poorly my gun had been protected with by it's packaging. The box that came with the gun showed a surprising level of damage.

I have to take a 30 mile round trip to buy a pneumatic coupling for my new gun in order to try it. I hope it is going to work properly once I manage to connect it to my compressor.

If they did not package your gun any better that mine, perhaps yours got damaged in transit.

I put another set of tabs in it and it seems to work better. I suspect the problem lies with the tabs.

I have got several of the other airline connectors which I no longer use if you want me to pop one in the post to you

An update on this -

The problem actually started after I bought some new tabs (genuine Charnwood T4R)

Charnwood sent me a few new tabs to test with my driver and they worked fine so it seemed likely that the tabs were the cause of the problem.

I checked the thickness of the tabs with a micrometer. They are meant to be 0.4mm thick but the problem ones were 0.5mm thick. The new ones they sent me are 0.4mm as are some from my previous batch.

It seems therefore that this batch of tabs are out of spec and causing the jamming. They are sending me a new box of tabs

There was probably nothing wrong with my old driver so I bought a new one unnecessarily Lucky I didn't fork out hundreds on an Omer - but then I probably wouldn't have realised that there was nothing wrong with the gun.