350 Maintaining Your GC
20 Swagelok Connections
Making Swagelok Connections
Objective
To make a tubing connection that does not leak and that can
be taken apart without damaging the fitting
Materials needed:
• 1/8- inch (or 1/4- inch, if used) preconditioned copper
tubing
• 1/8- inch (or 1/4- inch, if used) Swagelok nuts
• Front and back ferrules
• Two 7/16- inch (for 1/8- inch nuts) or 9/16- inch (for
1/4- inch nuts) wrenches
1 Place a Swagelok nut, back ferrule, and front ferrule to
the tubing as shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9 Swagelok nuts and ferrules
2 Clamp a stainless steel plug or similar fitting in a bench
vise.
3 Push the tubing into the stainless steel plug (Figure 10).
4 Make sure that the front ferrule is touching the plug.
Slide the Swagelok nut over the ferrule and thread it onto
the plug.
Front ferrule
Back ferrule
Nut
Tub ing
IMPORTANT!
The narrow end of the back
ferrule fits into the rear of
the front ferrule.
Do not
Use a separate stainless steel fitting in a vise for initial tightening of
the nut. Do not use an inlet or detector fitting. Strong forces are
required to properly set the ferrules, and damage to an inlet or
detector fitting is very costly to repair.
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