There’s an old saying that significantly advanced technology will end up seeming like magic if you don’t know how it works. While pneumatic air cylinders might seem magical, they’re actually based on a very simple engineering principle. This simplicity is what makes them so remarkably reliable.
In fact, their reliability is often the most notable feature of these devices, along with the fact that they’re clean and don’t leak in the same manner as, say, a hydraulic component. That makes them attractive for places with risks for potential leaks or cause contamination problems.
The Mechanism Behind Pneumatic Air Cylinders
At their core, air cylinders are mechanical devices that use the power of compressed gas to produce a level of linear motion that reciprocates back and forth. This is almost identical to the method employed by steam pistons and other reciprocating motion designs. In fact, those who view an operational diagram of a single-acting pneumatic air cylinder often compare it to the way that they understand internal combustion cylinders to work.
Like their hydraulic cousins, pneumatic cylinders force a piston to move in a specific direction. This piston itself is usually a smaller cylinder that’s attached to a rod.
In the end, this rod then transfers the force it acquires to an object that you need to be moved. This permits these cylinders to do actual work. Since the entire process is relatively simple, at least as far as sophisticated engineering systems go, these devices can very often hold up to a relatively long service life compared to many other comparable pieces of equipment.
In some instances, a cylinder will use the force of air to move in both directions. These use that force to extend and retract the rod, and they’re known as double-acting cylinders. Each of these designs still has two ports that allow air into the device.
One of these is generally used for the instroke and the other is used for the outstroke. Since the stroke length itself isn’t limited, the piston rod could theoretically bend. The high-quality SMC parts that SMC Pneumatics stocks have helped to assuage this problem by using only the best materials so they can stand up to the constant motion.
A variety of other types of pneumatic actuators have also been developed over the years. Many of them still rely on this same basic principle as well as a few others to adopt compressed air-driven technology to almost every application imaginable.
The Inner Workings Of Pneumatic Air Cylinders
Engineers have had to figure out the best way to compress a gas in order to get this kind of equipment to work well. Over the years, a multitude of studies has been conducted. All tried to figure out how the precision of pneumatic cylinders is affected as the load that acts on them attempts to compress the air even further.
Under vertical loads, the precision of the cylinder can be affected quite a bit. This is an extreme case since it represents a situation where the cylinder itself is taking the whole entire load by itself.
You might be surprised to find that while the compressibility of air acting as a substrate gas does indeed have an impact on the workings of a cylinder in this respect, it’s actually much lower than you might have otherwise imagined. One study found that even operating under these circumstances, the accuracy was still around 30 nm or so.
While your mileage may vary so to speak, and there are a wide variety of circumstances that can impact how a cylinder might work at a certain temperature and pressure, there’s no reason to believe that you shouldn’t be able to enjoy relatively consistent levels of accuracy regardless of what conditions you’re operating a specific piece of equipment under.
Technicians might balk at that and immediately remind you that you must always operate pneumatic air cylinders under exacting specifications. While you might think that means they’re not as flexible as they seem, quite the opposite is true.
Why Pneumatic Air Cylinders Are So Flexible
Since you have to operate every single piece of machinery within tolerances to remain safe, this is really a non-issue. For safety’s sake, you never want to operate anything out of its actual specified tolerances. This is standard regardless of the cylinder’s power source. The same goes for electrical and hydraulic equipment, so it takes the entire issue out of the equation.
Since air cylinders work entirely with air that enters the chamber in order to cycle the rod, they don’t use any substance that could be an explosion hazard or spark a fire. That might be important in certain industrial processes, especially those with combustion operations. One example would be environments that use petroleum for manufacturing.
It’s why you often see pneumatic tools in situations that would otherwise be potentially dangerous. You can theoretically bring them into almost any situation where you’d be able to charge up a cylinder or otherwise use some sort of air compressor.
Several safety measures, such as specialized locks, are fitted onto pneumatic cylinders. The locks make them work in the most mission-critical settings. They’ve often been viewed as safe for use even in situations where the slightest amount of system failure is considered catastrophic.
Several different amounts are available too. These mounts are how you attach a pneumatic cylinder. A plain rod and cylinder end will match, but you’ll more than likely want some form of threaded structure. This makes them easier to hold together, much in the same way that screws or nuts and bolts work.
Optimize Your Industrial Applications With SMC Pneumatics
At SMC Pneumatics, all of our pieces might be designed well but they don’t actually employ magic in their underlying infrastructure. Rather, they’ve simply incorporated a highly refined form of this principle. That’s why they are refined machine elements.
Regardless of the exact type of pneumatic air cylinder, you might need, you’ll want to contact SMC Pneumatics online so you can get up to date information about all the new developments in this rapidly changing field.