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Unread 30-06-2006, 09:49
KenWittlief KenWittlief is offline
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Re: Pros and Cons of Using Pneumatics

Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel_LaFleur
Anything you can do with Pneumatics you can do with motors (and vice versa).
I dont think this is entirely accurate if you take all design parameters into consideration

you might be able to get the same kind of motion from a motor/lead screw / servo... as you would from a pneumatic cylinder

but I dont think you can match the speed and power available from a pneumatic cylinder in a package of the same size, weight, cost, availability, simplicity...

Sure you could run cables all over your robot, or push rods, or torque rods to get mechanical power to the end of a long arm, but that would be very complex compaired to putting a cylinder out there with two plastic tubes.

There are tradeoffs going with pneumatics or motor actuators. For some applications pneumatics are definately better.

(BTW, to keep everything on an equal footing, dont forget that for each motor you also need a spike or Victor, a fuse, heavy copper wire, crimp terminals, a feedback circuit or limit switches + SW development time and effort.)

Last edited by KenWittlief : 30-06-2006 at 09:52.