I'm designing a product that has a need for an inexpensive low pressure (<20psi) 9-way valve with orifices in the 1/8" range.  This doesn't seem to exist on the market, and custom brass bodied valves blow our budget.

Something we are considering is making the valve body out of delrin with a central reamed hole and 8 smaller holes radiating out from it.  Into that hole we'll press a stainless steel shaft with a coaxial hole and a single radial hole that can be rotated to align with the radial holes of the valve body.

The press will have to be light to allow the shaft to rotate under hand pressure, but still tight enough to form a good seal.  The materials we are flowing are non abrasive and the valve will be cycled on the order of 50k times in it's expected life.  Quantities will be ~5k.

Does this seem like a sane route to take?  Is there an industry out there that regularly uses valves like these?

There is/was a radial n-way valve called, I think, a ScaniValve, or some such, intended for multiplexing a single pressure transmitter or sampling system among a bunch of sampled streams.  They are normally motor driven and cycle slowly.

Gas chromatography and high pressure liquid chromatography use small plug valves made of PTFE, with aluminum shells and stainless hardware.  They are normally hand operated with rather small handles.  They are commonly available with a variety of plugs, including 4-way 6-way and 8-way radial selectors.  9-way would be a special, but should be achievable.  One market leader is/was Hamilton.  I have used them on an OEM basis, driven directly by size 23 steppers, and gotten decent life and tolerable pricing.

Do not underestimate the cost of homebrewing this stuff; I have seen fortunes dissipated trying to make small valves(needlevavle) on the cheap.

By "9-way" I mean 1 input and 8 possible outputs.  I have no idea whether that is correct terminology or not, I was just going along with some data I had calling the 4 output valve we have a "5-way".  Doesn't make sense to me either.

Thanks for the pointer to Hamilton.  Their 8 port valve is what we need, but their pricing is about an order of magnitude too high this product.  I think I'll order one to take apart and see if we can't engineer a lower performance/cheaper material version.

Therer exists on the market distribution 'lists' for solenoid valves with a number of outputs, where any output may be either blinded/plugged or closed with a removable hand operated needle valve, or you can mount a solenoid valve to open one outlet at a time or several at the same time. Inlet to the lists from one  or both sides.

In this way you can have have at least a 9-way or higher number of outlets, with clearly defined on/off outputs.

Even if this is available in SS, brass or aluminium, it seems that you are looking for something smaller, more compact and cheaper than this.

Another way is of course to  look for a combination of valves that are three- or fourway but with a common inlet.

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