Slowing a piston with full power
 

Is there a way to make a piston travel slower but with full power?? Like some kind of flow restrictor?
Thanks
Bruce

Re: Slowing a piston with full power
 

Yes. There are some right angle turns (threaded on one side) in the KOP that have a small white knob on one side. The knob is a flow controller.

Re: Slowing a piston with full power
 

Re: Slowing a piston with full power
 

You can also try getting a pipe plug and drilling a small hole in the plug and screw it in the exhaust port of the air valve. This will slow the exhaust and therefore slow the piston. It works well and you simply keep drilling out the hole till the desired piston speed is achieved. You can also get adjustable flow control valves. I like the pipe plug trick because once it is correct it can not be adjusted and messed up. I use this in industrial applications all the time.

Re: Slowing a piston with full power
 

Do not do this. While it may be acceptable in some industrial applications, it is not acceptable on an FRC robot. Read the rules in Section 8.3.4 very carefully.

Just stick with the suggestion to use the flow control valves provided in the Kit Of Parts. They are provided for just this purpose.

-dave


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Re: Slowing a piston with full power
 

One thing to remember about these flow control valves. They control the flow of air LEAVING the cylinder. They do not limit the flow of air entering the cylinder.

Re: Slowing a piston with full power
 

That is not automatically true. It all depends on how you use them, and how you place them in the pneumatic circuit.


-dave




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Re: Slowing a piston with full power
 

A quick study would seem to indicate that one would only need to constrict the flow of air entering the piston on the stroke one wants to limit the speed as the other side is open the atmosphere and just vents. However, taking this to an extreme limit though, if you completely or nearly completely close the needle valve on the vent side then is will limit the flow significantly and slow things down.

So here is my question, is it possible to use various settings on valves on both ends such that on the out stroke you have one speed and then on the in stroke a significantly different speed. a.ka. out - slow .... in - faster

Thanks,

APS

Re: Slowing a piston with full power
 

This would be possible, but you would need to mount the needle valves at the solenoid exhaust ports to be effective. If you mount the needle valves on the cylinders, air flow will be throttled in both directions which would prevent varying the speed per cylinder direction.

Re: Slowing a piston with full power
 

We did this last year by putting one on each end of the piston, and adjusting each one accordingly. The best way to find out how it affects it is by adjusting one side a little, and then firing it back and forth and seeing how it reacts.
You can get them pretty different, just try and see what works best for your application.

You can have them on either the solenoid portion or the piston portion, won't really affect it that much since the air flow is mostly controlled by the small diameter of the adapters and plugs more than anything.