Pneumatics Math Help

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by euhlmann

..you'll want some sort of counterbalance..

If you're looking at repeatedly lifting a load and leaving it there, using a counterbalance (whether gravity, spring, or otherwise) will buy you a factor of two in the amount of work you need to do in each half stroke. That is, you can do work both on the upstroke (lifting the load with spring/counterbalance help) and the down stroke (adding energy to the spring/counterbalance). When using pneumatics for a lift, deciding whether the complexity of the counterbalance is worth having a smaller cylinder is usually a real engineering question (meaning that the answer is "it depends"). In my experience, counterbalancing a pneumatic actuator is less frequently an improvement than in the case of an electric actuator. This is especially true when you do not need to pressurize both sides of a cylinder, but get a "free" light spring or gravity return.