You may want to look at the math AGAIN. The cylinders are rated on the actual piston diameter, so a 2" cylinder has a 2" diameter piston. When you do the math, a 2" piston has a surface area of 3.14 square inches. At 60 psig, this equals 188 lbs. of lifting force. In addition, I believe the longest stroke you can get is 24". You are correct that these things require a LOT of air volume. We used a 2" x 24" to lift ourselves in "Raising the Bar" and it took a good 30 seconds to get us all the way up.
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Originally Posted by Alex.Norton
Why can't pneumatics lift? We used a 2-inch cylinder in 2004 to lift our robot and that was pulling. If you look at the math that 2-inch cylinder (the actual piston was probably smaller, lets say 1.5 inches) has 7 square inches of pushing power. At 60 psi that means that cylinder has 424 pounds of force. Now lets lower that estimate some for efficiency and put it at a mere 300 pounds just for fun. That means that with the number that our team currently owns (two) we could lift 5 robots off the floor to a height of about 3 ft. If we didn't lift us then with two we could lift every other robot on the field. They have more than enough power to lift your entire team.
However, I don't think that would be the way to do it cause that takes a long time to charge up for (and more than all of the storage that we got). I think a motor winch would be better suited. Also why is a lift more dangerous than a ramp? When rolling up a ramp the robot is moving on a very narrow surface and might drift without the driver being able to tell. When a lift is working then all of the force is vertical, that robot only moves up and not laterally (hopefully). No lateral force result in no lateral motion and so how does the robot topple? If the lift is done well I bet that it’s safer than a ramp cause it can be better automated.
Just a couple of thoughts
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