When you receive you foot pump the nozzle will appear as in figure 5. Lift the locking lever. Remove the standard nozzle, and insert the air pump adapter. Close the locking lever by pressing it back down.

Have a Coke or Pepsi

You need to acquire a plastic PET bottle. The easiest way to do so is to buy a soda. Make sure the soda bottle is plastic. Don't purchase a soda larger than a 1 liter bottle. A half liter bottle is ideal. I've tried the adaptor bottle cap on all sizes of soda bottles up to 2 liters and it fit all of them.

Empty the PET bottle of soda and clean it out with tap water. The bottle should be completely dry before using. It's interesting to note, that if a full bottle of soda is dropped, the resulting pressure caused by the release of the carbonate, greatly exceeds the 50 psi we will use the bottle for. Soda companies had designed the PET bottle to withstand a rapid increase in bottle pressure, that would come from dropping the bottle. This is something I never realized before working with the air muscle.

Remember no glass bottles should be used in the air muscle pneumatic system.

Building the First Demo Device

The first mechanical device we will build is a simple device that can be used to measure the contraction of the air muscle, see figure 6. The base is 1" x 2" lumber 11" long. I used this material simply because I have it lying around. You can just as easily use metal or plastic. At each end I drilled a hole to accept an 8-32 machine screw 1 3/4" long. The machine screws are inserted and held in place using two 8-32 nuts. One nut on each side of the wood. The head of the screw and shaft protrude about 3/4" above the wood.

The top screw is threaded through the top opening of the air muscle, before inserting the screw into the wood. A rubber band is looped through the bottom opening of the air muscle looped around the bottom screw. The rubber band stretches the air muscle when it is in its relaxed state.