Quote:
Originally Posted by IndySam
FIRST barely scratches the surface of what you can do with pneumatics.
Wait until you become mechanical engineers and start building custom machinery, you will fall in love with the power and simplicity of pneumatics (you will really like pneumatic motors)
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True, I work for a major plastic injection molding supplier. We build robots, tooling, custom systems, granulators, dryers and use many different types of pnuematic components depending on what needs to be done. We use cylinders like grippers, rodless linear cylinders, actuators, and guided cylinders.
SMC is our main supplier and here's a link to the page on thier U.S. website where they list the different types of pnuematic actuators you can get,
http://www.smcusa.com/sections/products/actuators.asp . With the countless types and different designs FIRST doesn't even scratch the surface of what's available.
I have the complete SMC binder (catalog) here at home and it's 5" thick although that covers everything from cylinders to valves to tubing. It's thicker than my MSC book!
Bimba and Parker are two other major suppliers of pnuematic cylinders.