How much air do we need?

[DonRotolo]

Depends on several factors. Of course, you'll need the compressor on board, the maximum of four Clippard tanks will not supply enough air to even lift them once.

Let's discuss what the tanks are for: Your compressor can only push out so much compressed air in a given time. But, you might need more volume than that, so you can store some of the air volume in the tanks.

So, your 24 x 2" cylinders need something like 150 Cubic Inches of air to extend. If your compressor can supply 10 cubic inches per second, you see that it will take 15 seconds to extend the cylinders. If, however, you have 100 cubic inches of air stored in 4 clippard tanks, then you need a lot less time to extend those cylinders, and your compressor isn't working as hard (for that instant).

NOTE: The numbers given above are NOT ACCURATE, I have no idea what the output of the compressor is, nor have I accounted fr the fact that your cylinder uses 60 PSI air while the stored air is at 120 PSI.

So, what you need to do is figure out what your air requirements are, what your sources of supply are, and that will tell you how many tanks you need for a given performance.

Connect those tanks in parallel for better air volume, you need that for those huge cylinders.

Retracting the cylinders might be possible with just gravity, once you remove the pressure holding the pistons up.

Don