| Gallery, Projects and General > How do I?? |
| Making a pneumatic cylinder? |
| (1/4) > >> |
| loply:
Hi folks, I suddenly find myself interested in making a pneumatic cylinder for a project. The sort of thing which, when pressurised at one side, moves a piston by 15mm or so, and if pressurised on the other side it moves it back again. I know you can buy these fairly cheap but I want one with a large bore and short stroke and would love to make it myself. Trouble is I don't have one to reference off, so I'm guessing about how they're usually made. I gather the piston is going to need a seal similar to that found on a compressor piston, and I'll need one of those 'cup' type seals on the output shaft which seals harder when it gets pressurised. Is it pretty much as simple as that? I'd hate to spend hours producing it to discover it just blows air past every seal! I'm hoping to run this around 100psi. Bore will be somewhere in the region of 60-80mm. Would appreciate any input! Cheers, Rich |
| BillTodd:
With such a short stroke, it might be possible/easier to use a diaphragm or 'rolling rubber' seal rather than a typical sliding seal Diaphragm seals: http://www.diaphragmseals.net/diaphragm_products/diaphragms.htm lots of info in here: http://www.diaphragmseals.net/assets/pdfdownload/DiaCom_Catalog.pdf Piston seals: http://www.claron.co.uk/pistonse.htm. |
| David Jupp:
Particularly for the piston seal, a simple O is a possibility - some commercial short stroke actuators use O rings. |
| cfellows:
As David says, simple o-rings will probably work just fine for you. One o-ring on the piston and one around the output shaft. I've done a couple of projects with these and they are air tight. Chuck |
| loply:
Hmm, I presumed an O-ring wouldn't make an air tight seal. Interesting. Am I correct in assuming that if I pressurise a cylinder to 100psi, and the piston has a surface area of 10 inches, the piston is going to push with a force of around 1000lbs? Sounds obvious but just want to make sure. Presumeably therefore the bigger the bore/piston is, the bigger the force is? |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |