Properly engineered and installed pneumatic cylinders can keep your machine running efficiently and with ease. This is why staying up to date on the most current news and information on pneumatic cylinder technology is important. Pneumatic Tips is a great source of information about pneumatic cylinders.

All-stainless-steel cylinders now offered in 12 bore sizes

University Park, Ill.—Bimba Manufacturing Co. has announced the expansion of its industry-leading Original Line product series. Previously available in only 4 bore sizes, Bimba extended its All Stainless Original Line series to now include all 12 bore sizes currently available across the product line (5/16- through 3-in. bore).

Featuring stainless steel end caps, standard urethane wipers, PTFE-based rod and pivot bushings and food-grade synthetic grease, this non-repairable actuator is ideal for wash down application environments common in the food processing industry.

“While these cylinders have been designed with the food and beverage industry in mind, their all stainless steel construction makes them ideal for any application that requires corrosion resistance,” said Jerry Scherzinger, Bimba’s Product Marketing Manager. “This is a natural expansion of our line of all stainless steel actuators that will provide a wider range of sizes for our customers requiring corrosion resistant designs.”

Bimba Manufacturing

AutomationDirect adds heavy-duty air cylinders

AutomationDirect’s NITRA pneumatic product line now includes D-Series heavy-duty air cylinders suitable for applications where abusive conditions are a concern.

NITRA D-series heavy-duty air cylinders are interchangeable with other popular brands of NFPA cylinders. The heavy-duty double-acting cylinders are constructed with high quality aluminum components, including a magnetic piston fitted with a PTFE wear band. The magnetic piston can be used along with solid-state or reed switches for rod position sensing. The cylinders are also fitted with a Teflon-impregnated and hardcoat anodized heavy–duty external rod bearing to ensure smooth rod motion while maintaining rod rigidity and stability.

With a maximum operating pressure of 250 psi, this series includes bore sizes from 1-½ to 4 in.; depending on bore size, available stroke lengths range from 1 to 24 in.

Optional flange attachments, as well as nuts and rod clevises, are available. Prices for NITRA D-series NFPA air cylinders start at $95.50.

AutomationDirect

 

Hygienically safe pneumatic drives suitable for food/beverage use

Hauppage, N.Y.—Self-adjusting cushioning PPS from Festo Corp. means an end to time consuming adjustments when setting the correct cushioning with hygienic pneumatic cylinders. The cushioning system, available as an option with the Clean Design cylinder DSBF and the stainless-steel round cylinder CRDSNU, makes commissioning easier and also saves time. The system also makes it possible to achieve dynamic yet gentle cushioning at the end positions of a cylinder without manual intervention.

Saving time
Previously, users had to adjust the pneumatic end-position cushioning integrated into the cylinder manually, which had a negative impact on cycle times and noise levels. What is more, manual adjustment of cushioning took time, making the commissioning of installations a lengthy process, particularly those which included a large number of drives that required cushioning.

Festo’s self-adjusting cushioning PPS now ensures that the cushioning is always set correctly without needing any manual work on the part of the user, even if parameters such as friction and pressure change. It also reduces the acceleration forces acting on machine components and work pieces. This in turn reduces wear and minimizes time-consuming vibration. Furthermore, self-adjusting cushioning is less expensive and more robust than shock absorbers. Thanks to PPS, there is no need for an adjusting screw. This makes the cylinder easier to clean.

The right seal every time
The sealing materials and lubricating grease used have FDA approval for use with food. The modular sealing system means the right seal for every application: FDA-compliant standard seals for a long service life, FDA-compliant seals for grease-free operation, and variants for high temperatures up to 248° F (120° C) and low temperatures, down to -40° F (-40° C).

Rigid and precise
The guided drive DGRF with its compact design combines precision with torsional rigidity. Thanks to its smooth surfaces, large radii, and unique ease of cleaning, dirt deposits and corrosion are a thing of the past with this cylinder. Its precision guide will make it a popular choice for many applications in the food, beverage, and packaging industries, wherever high force and accuracy are required. There is also an optional variant for grease-free operation in applications subject to intensive cleaning.

Easy-to-clean accessories
Suitable proximity sensors are available that are resistant to cleaning agents, heat, and mold. The cylinder sensor SMT-C1, for example, can be mounted directly on both the DGRF and DSBF, using the sensor rail.

The tubing/fitting combination PLN/NPQP can be assembled quickly and easily and ensures long-term trouble-free operation, even in corrosive environments subject to intensive cleaning. The fitting NPQP is thus a practical alternative to costly stainless-steel fittings.

Festo Corp.

Air Engineering to manufacture 1.12-in. bore heavy-duty cylinders

Minneapolis—Air Engineering and Supply announced the manufacture and national distribution of the widely used 1.12-in. bore air cylinder, with up to 20-in. standard stroke with longer strokes available upon request.

A leading manufacturer of this style and size cylinder recently announced that it was discontinuing the product. Air Engineering and Supply recognized this as an opportunity to continue service to the industry with its own version of this heavy duty air cylinder. These are the popular and widely used double acting 18D and 18SD models available in both stud and universal mounts. Both are 1.12-in. bore models and feature nitrile seals rated for 180° F and 150 psi max. Cylinders are hard-coated anodized aluminum with zinc plated nuts and lock washers. The cylinders feature chrome plated stainless steel rods with brass pistons and have black oxide finished end covers. Designed with standard bumpers at both ends, the cylinders have low friction U-cup seals with moly lubrication.

Air Engineering and Supply has offered this style and size cylinder for more than 25 years and has a wide range of customers currently using the product. Among the many applications are all types of automation including articulating arms for tool balancers, ergonomic workstations, and basic pneumatic operations.

“By continuing to offer these 1.12-in. bore heavy duty cylinders, we’re best serving both the replacement market and new designers with a time-proven product that is very important to many customers,” said Dave Maurer, the company’s sales manager.

Air Engineering and Supply

Clippard launches second phase of 3D product catalog

Cincinnati—Clippard Instrument Laboratory announced the launching of its expanded 3D catalog powered by TraceParts. This new phase includes their extensive electronic and control valve miniature pneumatic lines.

Clippard Minimatics are used virtually everywhere for control, interface, sensing, logic and actuation functions. This broad range of applications spans a variety of industries including: machinery, packaging, medical equipment, processing, textiles, animation, agriculture, material handling, assembly, and many more. Clippard has a unique advantage by providing standard and special products and value added assemblies.

“Our customers have been asking for 3D models of all of our products to include in their designs”, said Jim Coshnitzke, the company’s advertising manager. “To satisfy these requests, we have launched a three phase project to add our entire product line to our TraceParts 3D catalog. This update completes phase two and provides our customers with 3D models of our popular electronic and control valve product lines”.

“Clippard has been providing precision fluid power and control devices to a wide variety of industries for over 60 years,” said Bob Noftle, President of TraceParts Inc. “They have accomplished an excellent reputation for high quality products and customer satisfaction that is known throughout the industry. TraceParts helps Clippard strengthen relationships with its customers by saving them time and helping them to make better design decisions faster than with paper-based catalogs.”

Clippard Instrument Laboratory Inc.

Compact pneumatic cylinders

PHDs Series CRS Cylinders feature a self-lubricating nitrile piston seal to increase cylinder performance and provides the best unit life rating in its class of 70 million linear inches of travel. In addition, this compact cylinder now features a clear anodized extruded body with integral slots for flush mounting of PHDs Series 6790/JC1 Miniature Switches for additional space savings. Optional shock pads extend cylinder life and minimize piston noise without increasing the length of the cylinder. The compact size of the Series CRS Cylinder makes it ideal for applications where cylinder length is critical.

Other advantages include: Compact size, eight bore sizes, integral switch slots, thru and threaded holes for easy cylinder mounting, available with two piston lengths.

PHD Inc.

Composite cylinder rods reduce weight

Walkerton, Ind.—When a design engineer needs to reduce the weight of a cylinder assembly, one of the first thoughts is to use a lighter cylinder material. Composite cylinders offer reduced weight, and Polygon Co. has been supplying them for more than 25 years. The company’s PolySlide composite cylinders are lower in weight than aluminum and are similar to magnesium.

However, the real nemesis of cylinder weight typically is more a function of the piston rod rather than the barrel material. Polygon Co. has engineered a new family of composite piston rods that can replace their metallic counterparts in certain applications, offering significant weight reduction. Polygon’s composite piston rods have been used successfully in commercial applications, proving their worth as a method of weight reduction. An added side benefit is that composite rods are corrosion resistant. This property is especially helpful when used in machinery exposed to caustic materials and/or cleaning agents.

Polygon Co.

New cylinder system from Polygon

Walkerton, Ind.—Polygon Co. has announced their new pneumatic cylinder known as Constrained Tube Technology (CTT). CTT is a complete pneumatic system that allows the composite tube to be fitted within the confines of a thin-walled outer host. The composite tube carries greater than 90% of the pressure vessel loads while the metallic host enables traditional assembly techniques such as welding, threading, retention rings, etc.

A housing must be used to handle the additional pressure load for the complete tube assembly.

“Housings can be 80/20 aluminum or other machined metal. It could be any material, even a wooden box,” said Paul Lashbrook, lead CTT engineer.

Containing housings do not need to be cylindrical nor do they need to be honed or plated, and can even be a lowgrade steel.

“The housing provides a durable casing for CTT, supporting and protecting the lightweight cylinder,” Lashbook said.

The CTT cylinder is an entire thin-walled actuator system utilizing a new end cap attachment system. The approach enables the design engineer to achieve the benefits of composite cylinder tubing such as corrosion resistance, improved seal life and unique fluid flow properties without manufacturing assembly changes.

For non-housed units, lower cost polymeric cylinders can provide the needed structure. “In traditional cylinders, the metal walls provide both pressure containment and structural strength. With CTT, the inner composite sleeve does all the load work while the thermoplastic outer tube and connection elements provide seamless and cost-effective assembly,” said James Shobert, Polygon Co. CEO. End caps can be fitted to secure the host tube and provide a very traditional cylinder outline for non-housed units as illustrated. This blends the high performance characteristics of advanced composites with the durability and economics of standard polymeric materials.

One consistent Achilles Heel of retrofitting composites into existing applications is being able to assemble the finished product using traditional metalworking techniques. Composite cylinder tubing cannot withstand drilling and maintain structural strength. This limited previous composite tubing to tie-rod cylinder applications almost exclusively. CTT’s tubing is not immune to this attachment problem. However, the required housings can be chosen to provide ample attachment points for mounting the assembly.

CTT has surpassed 27 million cycles under elevated testing pressure and is the perfect solution to demanding pressure vessel applications. Balancing performance and cost, it is uniquely suited for today’s lean operational environments.

Polygon Co.

Risk assessment, Part 2 — cylinder applications

A thorough machine risk assessment should focus, at least initially, on the actuators, whether they are cylinders, air motors, air bags, or clutch brake mechanisms. We suggest starting here because safety systems generally de-energize the directional valves that control the actuators when a safety event occurs so it is crucial to consider the outcome when these valves become de-energized. What type and magnitude of hazard(s) could occur if a valve malfunctions when being de-energized? Take time to consider these potential scenarios during your risk assessment to help prevent future machine damage, downtime and personal injury.

Even though most pneumatic systems operate in the 80-100 psi range, there are many variations to this, both higher and lower. To make our point, we will concentrate on this common pressure range. However, you should consider your actual system pressure when doing a risk assessment on your own equipment.

The pressure supplied to an actuator is literally the driving force and the higher the pressure, the higher the force the actuator can apply to the work piece (and to an associated pinch point, etc.). The chart below indicates how much force can be generated by standard size cylinders at both 80 psi and 100 psi.

According to ISO standards and some pending ANSI standards for pneumatic cylinder presses, you must take additional safety measures to protect against personal injury and/or machine damage for any force greater than 150 N/33.7 lbf or a load greater than 15 kg/33 lb of mass (including tooling and load). A single-channel valve is an unacceptable solution because any malfunction in the valve that allows pressure to continue to flow downstream could result in pinch-point forces exceeding these standards allowances due to a fully pressurized cylinder or a cylinder with a high gravitational load. Thus, redundancy and monitoring are required which raises your minimum control category to at least 3.

It is easy to see that forces higher than these are attainable in most typical machine operations depending on actuator size and supplied pressure. In cases where these force threshold values are exceeded, additional measures must be utilized in order to provide adequate machine safeguarding. Other factors, such as tooling, may result in much lower force threshold values being used in the risk assessment. You should examine these factors as well because they may make a difference in the cylinder’s potential for damage. For instance, a blunt ended cylinder with lower than 150 N or 15 kg force poses fewer risks than a cylinder with a guillotine or piercing tool attached to it operating at the same low force. Likewise, a cylinder stuck in the extended position would not have the same risks as a cylinder with a heating element (in a heat seal application) stuck in the engaged melting mode.

How can you avoid some of these hazardous conditions? There are three primary solutions for abating pneumatic actuator associated risks:

1. Reverse the cylinder motion to a safe position by using a 5/2 control-reliable device such as the ROSS CROSSMIRROR double valve. This will result in a safe state provided the return stroke of the actuator does not pose any additional risk. In the case of the heat sealing application, this could a very good solution. It would remove the heating element from the work piece as well as reverse the cylinder direction away from the pinch point.
2. Remove the air supply to the control valve and, therefore, to the actuators with control-reliability (Category-3 or -4). Use a safety-rated valve such as a ROSS’ DM2 series valve matched to the control category determined by your risk assessment. The advantage of this method is that one safety-rated exhaust valve can be used to remove the supply pressure from one or more directional control valves and actuators while helping maintain safety system control integrity.
3. In some cases, removing the supply pressure alone can leave a load free to fall or continue moving due to gravity or momentum. In addition to solution 2 above, consider the gravitational force and momentum operating on the mass of the load and apply a suitable solution to stop and hold the load in place. With the motive force removed, the suitable solution will be dependent upon the mass, the tooling, and the failure modes of the devices being used to maintain a safe state. Solutions may include the use of pilot-operated check valves to trap pressure beneficially or safety catchers/rod locks to mechanically hold the actuator(s) without trapping pressure in the system.

ROSS Controls

Pneumatic cylinders for extreme conditions

Line of pneumatic cylinders is available in the following configurations:

• XLC For temperatures down to -40 C (-40 F)
• XLCD For temperatures down to -40 C and ice scraper
• XLH For temperatures up to 150 C (302 F)
• XLD Heavy duty scraper to remove sugar, dirt, metal chips, and just about anything else from the piston rod

Technical data:

• Stroke length: up to 2800 mm
• Piston diameter: 32, 40, 50, 63, 80 and 125 mm
• Operating pressure: 1 to 10 bar (14.5 to 145 psi)

See a video of AIRTEC cylinders in action.

AIRTEC Pneumatics, Inc.