Cylinder Question

[Spiders]

I need to know if putting the cylinders on the side the air passes out of the pressure valve will increase the speed of the pneumatics? currently they are all on the side of the compressor, like this
Compressor > 4cylinder > pressure valve > Pneumatics
if we switch it to this
Compressor > pressure valve > 4cylinder > Pneumatics
is it faster? does it make any diff?

[IndySam]

Having more working air on the low side can help improve your speed but you loose the storage capacity on the hi-pressure side.

I have seen some successful teams put a storage tank near their cylinder for the first time this year to increase speed but I certainly wouldn't put all my storage on the low-pressure side.

[Spiders]

Originally Posted by IndySam

Having more working air on the low side can help improve your speed but you loose the storage capacity on the hi-pressure side.

I have seen some successful teams put a storage tank near their cylinder for the first time this year to increase speed but I certainly wouldn't put all my storage on the low-pressure side.

so two on each side would be good?

[Racer26]

It shouldn't really change alot, but if you're looking to maximize the speed of stroking, another team mentioned how they have a mechanical lock on the motion of their arm, they energize the piston, that has a clippard tank inline, thereby building lots of pressure to push with, and then they remove the mechanical lock, and it strokes quickly.

[MrForbes]

See if you can find the bottleneck in the system...it could be the solenoid valve. 39 used (I think) one tank before the regulator, 3 tanks after, and three solenoid valves feeding one cylinder. It works VERY well.

[1086VEX]

if you have multiple cyinders and the tank set up in the way you 1st explained you'll probably have dampened air flow because thats a lot of air going through one port. team 1086 has our pneumatic launcher (4 pistons) set up the 2nd way you explained. it gives us better air flow and we still get enough pressure to launch. if your usind 1 cylinder i dont think it'll matter.

[Chris Fultz]

another option to incease the speed is to not use pressurized air for the return action - just use a bungee or other light spring.

with out the restriction on the "exhaust" side of the cylinder flowing thru the fitting and solenoid, the actuation is extremely fast.

Note: this only works if you do not have a need to pressure-close the cylinder back to the original position.

Note: depending on which solenoid you use, you may have to make a tubing "loop" to close off the exhast port on the solenid to avoid leakage.

[jskene]

Compressor > pressure valve > 4cylinder > Pneumatics

will result in MUCH faster cylinder deployment. The regulator is a big restrictor to airflow.

We store our air in 4 Clippard tanks connected directly to 2 SMC valves, that are in turn connected directly to our piston. We designed it such that there is no tubing between the storage tanks and the cylinder, only high pressure fittings. The air flow we get with this arrangement is many times what we achieved by storing air at high pressure then feeding it through the regulator.

The downside is that we have no high pressure storage, only low pressure. This lengthens our shot-to-shot time. We added a pressure sensor so our shooter knows when there is enough air for a hurdle. (We have a second method of hurdling, so this doesn't slow us down much.)

Here is a shot of the height we get with this arrangement: